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FETTERS OF FREEDOM 
























































“‘And I Love You,’ He Said At Last.’’ 


See page 383 












1 FETTERS OF 
FREEDOM 


BY 

FRANCES GREDDINGTON 

n 



BOSTON 

SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 







Copyricht, 1924 

By SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
(Incorporated) 


Printed in the United States of America 


THE MURRAY PRINTINC COMPANY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

THE BOSTON BOOKBINDINC COMPANY 
CAMBRIOCE, MASS. 


©Cl AS08026 







CONTENTS 


fag* 


Part I. The Two Archibalds .... 1 

Part II. The Long Trail. 47 

Part III. Freedom. 129 

Part IV. Interludes . . . . . . 153 

Part V. World Without End . . . . 311 







,v 












% 





FETTERS OF FREEDOM 

/ 






Part I 


THE TWO ARCHIBALDS 













f 





FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


CHAPTER I 

Elizabeth Duncan’s path led over granite boulders, 
around fragrant clumps of bay and on through a prickly 
grove of pointed cedars to a grey barn which was leaning 
heavily on the ground. Though there was a sting of win¬ 
ter in the November rain that attacked her, she paused 
every few minutes to enjoy what she called the “slodgi- 
ness” of things. She liked being alone with nothing in 
sight but the Connecticut hills and the distant sound that 
encompassed her like a silver crescent. She liked being 
alive and young, with no blank walls or margins shorten¬ 
ing her vision. But above all else she liked the unmeas¬ 
ured power within her which made accomplishment seem 
a certainty. 

Two collie dogs followed dejectedly after. They were 
not as happy as their mistress, for their souls dwelt in 
the uncomfortable present. “Too bad you don’t carry 
umbrellas,” Elizabeth commiserated. “It isn’t much of a 
trick. You might try.” 

Once in the barn, the collies, who for obvious reasons 
had been registered as the family of Sans Souci, and who 
were called San and Sanny for short, dashed off through 
the windy bay to the stanchion sheds, where they threat¬ 
ened a family of rats with loud barkings. 

In one corner of the barn, the granary still stood 
3 


4 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


intact. By removing oat bins and by letting in windows 
on the southern side, Elizabeth had converted the store¬ 
house into an enviable and tranquil workroom, far away 
from the bothersome world. The one out was an iniquitous 
oil stove that kept her from perishing with cold. Three 
rusty steelyards still hung askew from wooden pins 
driven into a partition wall, while nailed-down pieces of 
zinc told of past contests with thieving rodents. 

In this hulking mastodon of another age, Elizabeth had 
written “The Lily Pond,” a product of her disdainful 
inexperience, and now she had begun her second novel. 
The story progressed with the speed of a local freight 
train, for her days were mercilessly interrupted by the 
exciting letters of the two Archibalds. The mischief 
came from the fact, not that they were both interested in 
her, but that she was interesed in both of them. She 
ascribed her disloyalty, if she were disloyal, to an evil 
fate that had brought two men of such high distinction 
her way at the same time. And now she had conceived the 
idea that she had no right to give up either of them, 
for each brought into her life something she could not 
live without. The older of the two men, Archibald Sat- 
terlee, was already tied to the domestic wheel, but Archi¬ 
bald Slater had come to her with no entanglements and 
he had asked her to marry him. She had said yes. The 
engagement had lasted until now it loomed threateningly, 
for she saw her promise to him meant a promise to marry. 
It also meant that to his upright family and to her own 
precious Aunt Fan. 

Having gone through the routine of opening the win¬ 
dows, lighting the villainous stove, and flipping an orange 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


5 


carriage duster over the top of her table, she began the 
fascinating business of reading her two Archibald letters. 
Satterlee wrote enchantingly. He had just the right 
sense of humor, a keen instinct for niceties of speech, a 
delicate fashion of interpreting the little happenings of 
which life is so exasperatingly made up. Slater’s letters 
were short, impassioned, demanding. Always, he had to 
be answered first. Today, she replied in part, “Christ¬ 
mas is too near. I am not prepared. June, possibly. 
Likely, not till another year.” 

Pushing away from the table, Elizabeth stood for a 
space by the open window, letting the rain drive across 
her face. She dreamed of a world where human beings 
were as swift as their thoughts. Even her speedily 
running typewriter acted as ball and chains to her soul. 
Lately, she had thought much about Archibald Satterlee. 
But how could she help it? What strained virtue was 
there in damning back flooding glory? The last time 
they had been together, he had kissed her—and— 
She knew herself to be a dreadful person—not wicked, 
exactly, but horrid. Yet the two Archibalds satis¬ 
fied such different needs of her complex nature, she 
conceived the grotesque idea that she had a right to 
them both. Preposterous! At least, according to the 
code of ethics which had been superimposed upon her by 
a passing generation. The law did not permit two such 
friendships to come into a woman’s life at the same time; 
it scarcely tolerated them tandem. 

With a fixed purpose to be impersonal, she finally 
began her second letter. “Do you care about Betel- 
guese? I read somewhere that Betelguese is so large 


6 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


that if it were as near to us as the sun is, its orb would 
cover the entire visible expanse of the sky. Don’t you 
scorn pinning stars to facts? Stars are in the heavens to 
make the nights glorious. Why do we hack so furiously 
at the outer rim of the mysteries of God?” 

Elizabeth lingered for a long time at the purple table, 
while the wind blew eerily through the open spaces of 
the barn, nagged the loose siding into chattering idiocy, 
and darkened the granary windows with sheets of water. 
She would have been glad to tell Satterlee about the 
storm. She wanted to tell him where she was, and what 
she was doing, and especially how she felt. She felt 
solitary and stranded, cut off from the world by God 
himself. Very faintly through the din, she could hear, 
now and then, the thump and squeal of a scuttling rat, 
followed by frenzied barkings of San and Sanny. She 
longed to write it down to him as it was and then to 
have him write it back to her in some beautiful, crystal¬ 
lized form, or simply make a sensible remark about her 
being alone in the abandoned barn and scold her, maybe, 
for wet feet. 

When at last the day greyed to indistinctness, she put 
on her wet coat and billycock. Calling the collies, she 
set out for the village post office, nearly three miles dis¬ 
tant. Easily, with no impeding petticoats, she vaulted 
or stepped over slumbering stone walls, squashed through 
muddy roads, and down soggy lanes, where years before 
long lines of cows had ambled to and fro for their milk¬ 
ings and their fodder. She loved to think of the old herd 
with wide spreading horns and amiable manners. Almost, 
she could hear them lurch past her in the dark, switching 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


7 


their coarse tails and sludging deep into the sodden 
earth. 

Blowmedown stood high on a windy hill, quite near to 
the Pinnacle, and not so very far from the old grey barn. 
It was a rambling stone house of varying altitudes. On 
the lower level was a flagged basement hall, flush with 
the ground and but dimly lighted by small casement 
windows. Opposite the broad house-door and sunk deep 
into a sturdily built partition-wall, loomed a cavernous 
fireplace where Aunt Fan still burned the backlog of 
tradition, hickory if she could get it, and for kindling, 
knots of pitch pine. When, two hours later, Elizabeth 
entered this sombre room, she found a supper table set 
for her close to a resinous fire and Aunt Fan, her precious, 
antique Greataunt Fan, delicately ensconced in a high- 
backed Sheraton chair which she adorned as exquisitely 
as her polished jade bowls adorned their teakwood 
stands. 

“You are a darling,” Elizabeth breathed softly as she 
flew past her aunt and up a stone stairway to the real 
house and to her own room. “I’ll be down in three jerks 
of a lamb’s tail.” 

With a not uncomprehending sympathy, Madame 
Duncan watched the Sittings of her grandniece. She 
knew the girl wrote books in the old grey barn, and got 
too wet and wandered too far over the hills; but still 
she would be glad to do the same if she weren’t clamped 
to Blowmedown by the fragility of her eighty-eight 
years. For Aunt Fan, who had courageously buried her 
own family of seven sons, and who in the Great War had 
lost the noblest of their descendants, could never escape 


8 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


feeling frisky or outgrow a passion of life planted deep 
in her race. Happily, the difference between this way 
and that had ceased to trouble her, and she was no longer 
worried by Elizabeth’s knickerbockers or by her psycho¬ 
analytic absurdities. She was satisfied to know that her 
grandniece was honest with herself and so with the 
world. It also seemed quite wonderful and considerably 
out of line that, just as she was being inundated by a 
tidal wave of loneliness, a trouble which threatens all 
old people, she should again have someone upon whom 
she could depend and who consulted her and not infre¬ 
quently followed her advice. 

Elizabeth had once described her mother as changeable 
silk, shot with gold. She was like that, beautiful but not 
made for daily use, too conspicuous, too insistently gay. 
In the days of the war, there had been no place for her 
and she had died, bequeathing her daughter to Madame 
Duncan. Elizabeth had come to her, a stranger, and in 
the hill-country of her forefathers Madame Duncan had 
seen her adopt the customs of her own people till she 
fitted her environment as an acorn fits its cup. 

A whine from Sanny and a beating of San’s active 
tail on the stone flagging meant that Elizabeth Duncan 
would soon join Aunt Fan. In another minute she 
appeared, in full evening attire. Her Delphinium blue 
skirt trailed here and there on the floor, while her damask 
slippers with sparkling buckles matched her blue stock¬ 
ings. There was not much waist to her gown, but about 
her neck she had flung a string of Whitby jet that, in 
its dull lustre, matched her hair and eyes. Thus punc¬ 
tiliously had Elizabeth frocked for Aunt Fan. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


9 


Madame Duncan, in pleased fashion, watched her 
grandniece as she drew her chair close to the fire and 
held her long nervous hands out over the coals. She 
seemed unusually tense. Beneath the sombre expression 
of her face lurked tragedy, or was it merely some new 
purpose that fanned the smouldering fires of her nature? 
Madame Duncan waited in patience. Usually Elizabeth 
was a cheerful companion, being like herself very happy 
to be alive and free. They sometimes talked to each 
other about this freedom of theirs. At last the silence 
was broken by the appearance of Loong Li who, with 
exquisite softness, placed a steaming steak in front of 
his mistress with the customary accessories of salad, 
cheese and oaten bread. While Elizabeth ate her way 
through this meal with the nicety and precision of a 
man, Aunt Fan, who two hours earlier had dined off 
Scotch broth and toast, resumed her knitting on a pink 
baby’s hood. 

When supper was over and all that was left on the 
polished black table were two flickering candles, Madame 
Duncan surprised Elizabeth by saying, “Is it, my dear, 
because of any fear you may have of disconcerting me 
that you never smoke?” 

“I suppose I really ought to,” Elizabeth replied, swiftly 
rising, as was her custom, to Aunt Fan’s line. “My 
generation does, mostly—even the best of it.” Eliza¬ 
beth paused for a minute while she drew San’s head 
across her knees. “I—I can’t be bothered. I have 
no prejudice, and it is no longer an act of emancipation. 
I sleep my body, I feed it, I bathe it, I polish its 
nails, exercise it, drink it, fill its^ teeth, and that is 


10 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


enough! I. ref use to smoke it. You see, if it should 
get the smoke complex, I should have to smoke it the 
rest of my life.” 

Outside in the wet, a blind jerked its moorings and 
shut. Sanny growled in her sleep, then the gust sub¬ 
sided and Aunt Fan began to remove a pack of cards 
from a finely cut porphyry box. They would soon be 
playing their evening game of piquet. 

“If you will excuse me for a minute,” Elizabeth said 
in a voice that trembled ever so slightly, “I will send a 
telegram to Arch. I mailed him a letter about— 
about something of importance, but I’ve changed my 
mind.” 

And so again, Madame Duncan saw her niece mount 
the stone stairway. The door closed behind her, and 
she could not know what message Elizabeth sent forth in 
the fierce storm to her impatient lover. 


CHAPTER II 


Early the next morning Elizabeth Duncan woke in 
the dark. The wind was still high and the shutters on 
the house gave strange beatings and flutterings like 
trapped woodcock. Out in the hall a clock struck four 
times. She might still catch the Northern express bound 
for New York. When signalled, it stopped at the village 
station. Before weighing this old, fierce impulse to run 
away from things, she was out of bed and dressed. A 
short note for Aunt Fan’s breakfast tray and a second 
for Loong Li, she thought, sufficiently explained her 
departure. 

Ten hours later, Elizabeth entered Archibald Slater’s 
private office in the Billings publishing house. 

“You queer dear!” she exclaimed sharply, and then, 
“You are ruthless, like an armored tank. Arch!” she 
cried, “there is something fierce and terrifying about 
you.” 

“Life is fierce and terrifying.” 

“You are half savage.” 

“Not just half. I had not yet taken time to answer 
this,” he added as he looked down at his secretary, where 
her night letter was still lying. 

“Oh!” Elizabeth buried her hands boyishly in her 
pockets. “I thought you might like to see this,” she said 
as she dropped on top of the blue-pencilled envelope, 
something white and shining. “Oh, Arch! You are a 
snoring dormitory! It’s what I am going to wear Christ¬ 
mas Day to please you, sir!” 

11 


12 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Archibald placed a shaking hand over the soft, shining 
fabric, glanced at Elizabeth and looked helplessly out 
the office window, where a flock of skyscrapers shot 
dizzily heavenward and effectually blocked his vision. 
Strange desires winged their way through his brain and 
left him inarticulate. 

“I rushed around the shops about three hours this 
morning,” Elizabeth spoke quickly to cover his embar¬ 
rassment, “and I have done all that kind of shopping 
I’m going to do. Then I called on my publisher and 
Franks asked me to go to lunch with him and so I went. 
As long as he gave me the opportunity, I thought I’d 
explain that though ‘The Lily Pond’ isn’t much of a 
novel, he is quite wrong in his criticisms. And he said 
that invariably all authors whose books he published or 
rejected, told him that. The whole tribe of them were 
eternally explaining to him why and how and wherein he 
was mistaken. The brute!” 

“But I have precisely the same experience.” 

“Franks is a hateful person,” Elizabeth suppressed an 
inclination to quarrel. “Never could his commercial 
self write anything as beautiful as ‘The Lily Pond!’ He 
says no really nice woman can love two men at once. 
He says men can, but women can’t. I told him women 
could just as much as men and more frequently. The 
difference is women don’t marry two at once. They 
aren’t naturally bigamists, nor as apt to mess up their 
lives, being more tidy. Now I might love one man with 
one side of me and another with some other side and 
still-” 

“Look here, Elizabeth, is this a confession?” 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


13 


Arch still held delicately between his forefinger and 
thumb the sample of shimmering satin, but his eyes were 
blazing. 

“No,” she said slowly, “only, you are an anchorite, 
and—and I—you know, Arch, I love glamour— 
enchantments. I have been kissed—I don’t like it—but 
I am afraid I might hurt you—give you a rotten deal.” 

“That is my hazard.” 

“You are born a generation too late for your own 
happiness,” Elizabeth ventured. “I am just a gob of 
clay waiting for the potter’s wheel. I don’t even know 
yet what he wants to do with me.” Again she looked at 
Archibald. His eyes of burnished steel made her shiver. 
“But you are splendid, untouched like a crusading 
knight.” 

“Hell! Come on out on the Avenue and walk,” Arch 
interrupted, “where we can talk sense. We’ll get tea 
somewhere. I suppose you go back on the six o’clock?” 

“You have a beautiful face, when you are angered,” 
Elizabeth said as she bent to rescue the bit of white 
satin which now lay crumpled on the rug. 

Then she felt herself deliciously sinking to the ground 
floor in the express elevator, and then she was out in the 
crisp November air. Arch’s nerves were raw. There 
was a white heat about him, a pent-up something which 
she adored. It was exciting to be with him when he was 
in a temper and he always was in a temper. He hadn’t 
scolded her as he usually did, but he looked grim enough 
to kill things and austere as the granite rock on the 
Pinnacle. It seemed a bold thing to do, to love Arch, but 
to marry him- 


14 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“I shall like being Mrs. Archibald Slater,” Elizabeth 
risked, “for when I do belong to you, you will take good 
care of me. You are too true a New Englander to 
waste anything, even a wife. I love thrift.” 

Archibald felt his nerves jump. In five weeks, on 

Christmas Day, the twenty-fifth of December-. He 

looked down at the free-swinging girl at his side. Men 
didn’t hold their wives so easily nowadays, and he 
—he was conscious of being old-fashioned. 

“I hope,” he said abruptly, “you wrote ‘The Lily 
Pond’ according to some psychoanalytic theory and, darn 
it! that it’s not the expression of a fixed conviction.” 

Then the warfare began. It raged unevenly, for Arch 
was the keener of the two and he had convinced himself 
that he was fighting for his life’s happiness. But as 
they were racing down the long cement platform of the 
Grand Central, he paused in the middle of laying down 
the laws of loyalty and common sense and laughed. 
Regardless of onrushing traffic, he dropped his hand on 
Elizabeth’s shoulder and kissed her. “You must know,” 
he said, “I am very happy about the twenty-fifth.” 

It was ten o’clock when Elizabeth again found herself 
standing on the home platform. An electric light 
swinging from a dead maple tree marked the way to 
Woodis & Crosby’s garage. Here she climbed into 
her swift car, in which she had come to the village early 
that morning, and was soon churning up the muddy hill 
roads to Blowmedown. It was a happy thing to be home 
again, she felt, as she made her way steadily toward the 
twinkling lights on the Pinnacle. Aunt Fan would be 
waiting for her, and the collies and Loong Li. There 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


IS 


should always be a permanent some one in a house. It 
would have to be a no-longer-young person but one 
who was content to be a fixture. She remembered 
the lonely gilt and damask apartments in Paris and 
Vienna and St. Petersburg, when she had lived so many 
desolate years with her mother and was thankful for 
Aunt Fan. Then a startling thought came to her about 
the new home she and Arch were to make together— 
or she was to make for Arch. 

“You are a disobedient person, to sit up so long past 
your bedtime,” Elizabeth said as she slipped into a 
low chair beside Madame Duncan. “Arch sent you 
some red roses. And, oh! I have bought out dear 
Monsieur Rachel. We are to be married, Christmas 
Day.” 

“So soon? I scarcely see how it is possible.” 

“I have done everything today that has to be done, 
except the license. That is Arch’s job. At one swoop, 
I ordered my frocks, hats, lingerie, boots and slippers, 
and my visiting cards. Mrs. Archibald Godkin Slater, 
Blowmedown, High Ridge, Connecticut, and you an¬ 
nounce us. You don’t mind announcing us, do you? 
‘Mrs. Crashaw Duncan has the honor,’ etc. Your name, 
you know, is my hall-mark.” 

Aunt Fan gripped the red roses in her lap and so 
avoided making little movements with her hands that 
betrayed nervousness. “I can’t quite adjust myself, h 
she apologized. “Possibly you will remain in town a 
fortnight for fittings. There will be fittings?” 

“I don’t see the necessity,” Elizabeth spoke concisely, 
as if this were a contested point. “Monsieur Rachel has 


16 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


my dummy. My gowns will be all right. He measured 
with tears when he finally understood I would not go 
down to try on my wedding gown. It is to drop seven 
inches below my knees and my silk stockings come all 
the way up—not socks, I mean. And there is a train 
and a veil. Rachel fought for the veil,” she added 
conscientiously. “I wear it for you, Aunt Fan, and 
history and a little bit, maybe, for my New Englander. 
I have brought you samples of my pretty things, but you 
can’t see them until morning.” 

Elizabeth balanced a pine knot on the iron firedogs 
and stirred the logs to a new brightness. “I won’t be 
bothered,” she declared as she deftly snapped a live coal 
back from the hearth rug into the flames. “I must be 
free to work between now and Christmas. I must finish 
writing my book. You are glad I am to marry Arch?” 
she asked, determinedly fixing her eyes on Aunt Fan’s 
anxious face. 

Madame Duncan, repressing a sigh, receded into her 
chair till she looked weak and haggard. Her age brought 
a pang to Elizabeth’s heart. That was one of the facts 
she was not able to face: Aunt Fan’s extreme age. 

Had any human soul probed the meaning of the word 
empty? To Elizabeth nothing was more fathomless. 
Death. That was quite a different affair. But the after¬ 
emptiness. She saw herself again in Paris in the gilt 
and silken apartment as it had been after her mother 
died, and bent her trembling face low over the fire. 

“Archibald Slater belongs to an old family,” Madame 
Duncan spoke at last, but the words came slowly and 
with breaks between the sentences. “He has a noble, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


17 


though harsh nature. I might say cruel. He is like his 
greatuncle, Thomas Godkin. Were you thinking of 
Arch when you used the expression ‘accidental cruelty’ 
in describing Gerould Greenleaf in ‘The Lily Pond’? 
Archibald is like Greenleaf, I fear. But if you value 
his good heart, and can think beyond his hardness, you 
may live happily with him. It will not be easy. I love 
the boy,” she added after a pause. “But you are both 
so—so undisciplined. Still colts out to pasture.” 

“We are merely natural: that’s the way people are 
nowadays.” 

Madame Duncan leaned forward and placed her hand, 
light as thistledown on her niece’s shoulder, but she 
remained silent. 

“We had a bad time today,” Elizabeth continued. 
“Arch hates my book. Like you, he believes in repres¬ 
sions and despises the part about herd instincts, fails to 
understand mob rule. He accused me of believing all 
manner of things which I do not believe and of snow¬ 
balling the world with Freudian doctrines. Arch is rather 
old-fashioned; he has just heard of Freud when I have 
begun to forget him. Some day it may be inconvenient. 
In no way, for instance, could you call him an oppor¬ 
tunist.” 

“There is one thing I am grateful for,” Madame Duncan 
said as she made vague preliminary motions which meant 
to Elizabeth that she was mustering her strength prepara¬ 
tory to going to her room, “you take Archibald’s name. 
There is that dear Alice Dawes who came to see us, so 
properly married with two little sons and a good husband, 
if a fool. But Miss Dawes! One never could explain.” 


18 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Explanations are beastly,” Elizabeth acquiesced. 
“To avoid being bothered, I would sacrifice any minor 
conviction.” 

Then in swift response to Aunt Fan’s, “My dear, will 
you?” Elizabeth rang a tiny bell which summoned 
Madame Duncan’s well seasoned maid. Her aunt was 
a bit stiff about certain things. She always, for instance, 
made the first motion, when she wished to retire. This 
formality Elizabeth had learned to respect, though with 
rebellion in her heart, for Aunt Fan expended her energy 
too freely and got too tired. Like a little child, she did 
not know bed was good for her. It was a return to cradle 
instincts, Elizabeth reasoned sorrowfully, while she made 
as easy as she could the straight and difficult path of 
her aunt’s choosing. 

Elizabeth Duncan entered her own room that night 
with a feeling that she had not been quite true to its 
inherent integrity. Two years had dulled for her neither 
its charm nor the feeling of loyalty it evoked, nor the 
stern demand it made upon her soul. There was no 
place on the polished lowboy for rouge pot and lip salve, 
or for the expensive French perfumeries and exotic 
powders which her mother had taught her were neces¬ 
sities, but which she had discarded along with her white- 
aproned Annette. Her stern old room belonged to the 
most ancient part of Blowmedown. There was a four- 
poster free of hangings in the centre and blue-green 
curtains at the openings. The floor and the ceiling 
wavered uncertainly, while a deep fireplace at one end 
let in, according to season, snow, rain, sunlight or wind. 
The room was like a grey shadow; a place for sleep. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


19 


On a cherry stand by her bed, Elizabeth discovered an 
unopened letter. It was not Wednesday, the day Archi¬ 
bald Satterlee’s letters always reached her, the day she 
called lucky. But the even, beautiful direction that 
made her own name seem so charming and filled her with 
happiness because she lived in a place with so delightful 
an address, was unmistakable. She tore open the envelope 
and read: 

“You are free, dear lady. You who owe no hostage 
to fate can meet life with an Olympic calm, while we who 
have children must needs tremble at every wind that 
blows.” 

The letter covered many sheets. Elizabeth placed it 
carefully back on the little table and hurried to take 
her nightly plunge in a tub of icy water. Finally she 
slipped glowing and excited into bed. But the calm 
beginning of Satterlee’s letter was no presage of its con¬ 
tents. When Elizabeth folded its pages with high 
decision and cast them from her, her heart was beating 
madly in response to its last words, “I love you. I love 
you. I love you.” 


CHAPTER III 


Archibald Slater was annoyed with Elizabeth, 
annoyed because of “The Lily Pond” and puzzled. The 
heroine who strode through the book in bluff, careless 
fashion was like Elizabeth and he was in some points 
the counterpart of Gerould Greenleaf, the man she mar¬ 
ried. When Greenleaf found he could not keep up with 
his wife’s adventurous pace, Edie cheerfully let him go 
with these words, “Ten years we have lived together! 
That is more than I ran for. We have been happy.” 

And the man amended, “At first—but it has been more 
than three years since you have cared a damn.” 

“There you are mistaken,” Edie denied. “I love you 
now quite as much as then, I appreciate you more and 
understand you better. It is you who are restless for 
a new experience. At first you will miss the habit of me, 
I am afraid. I do thousands of convenient little things 
for you that you do not notice. It is not your place to 
notice and I’d not like you if you did. If you need 
me when you beat your notes on modern esthetics into 
book form, let me know. I make no promise, but-” 

“Hell! Edie, why did you marry me, anyhow?” 

“Because you asked me to, implored me to, bullyragged 
me into it. I didn’t care. It did make you wild with 
happiness. You remember that?” 

“Would you have gone with me anyway?” 

“The marriage ceremony is to me nothing but an 
archaism.” 


20 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


21 


Archibald had not read beyond this sentence. It is 
just a girl’s silliness, he thought, and he was glad that 
Billings had rejected the manuscript. But now he began 
to realize that what he thought a notion might be a 
creed. “Hell!” he found himself stuttering very much 
after the fashion of Gerould Greenleaf. 

There were many things to be decided upon before 
Christmas Day—things which he and Elizabeth should 
have settled when she was in town, instead of fighting 
all the way down the Avenue and into the man-rushed 
station. Where were they to live in that vague afterward 
which Elizabeth shot away from whenever he brought up 
the question? What time of day was the marriage to 
take place? And would Elizabeth be satisfied if he 
engaged the mumbling St. John St. John to do the job? 
That was the most natural way and so the kindest. He 
would like to give her red roses but he had a vague 
impression that brides never carried red. Anyhow he 
put it, he failed to visualize Elizabeth as a bride. 

Arch, his nerves on edge by conflicting impulses, 
decided that whatever happened, Elizabeth should make 
the next move. When five days passed and no message 
came from her, he saw his decision had been foolish. 
Subduing his resentment, he jerked down on slips of 
paper and spiked on a file questions that could no longer 
be evaded. When he had a dozen of these, carefully 
tabulated, he took his seat in front of his high secre¬ 
tary and began to type angrily, for he was in no mood 
for pen and ink. He had come to the end of his second 
sheet when the night watchman brought him the familiar 
grey envelope with the High Ridge postmark. 


22 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“What do you suppose, what do you suppose?” Eliza¬ 
beth wrote. “I have just been appointed dog warden 
by the first selectman—possibly intended as a joke as 
I go about in knicks. But I have decided to accept the 
position and to make the best dog warden the town has 
ever had. The last one, whose term I am to complete, 
didn’t know any better than to muzzle collies and to 
chain up police dogs. There is a small remuneration 
connected with this office, so I may be able to give you 
maple sugar with your waffles. I make good waffles.” 

Archibald Slater looked for comfort in the last sen¬ 
tence, found none and ended by returning to his type¬ 
writer and his notes. When finished, his painfully written 
letter with its dozen necessary questions embarrassingly 
put was inadequate. However a man had to know a few 
things about his own wedding. He wasn’t accustomed to 
pinning girls down to facts. Elizabeth might not pin. 
What then? “Hell!” Again he thought of Gerould 
Greenleaf and was furious. 

Coatless, as he liked best, Arch tore out to a sub-post- 
office which was near at hand and mailed his letter. The 
stars shone clear in a midnight sky and Arch, who found 
burdensome the smaller issues of life, was reassured. His 
tense, warring anger which had tortured him for days 
vanished. After all, he loved Elizabeth. She was strong 
and beautiful like the night. He loved her clear blue 
eyes with the fire in them, her crisp speech, her daring, 
her long silences. He had never been able to break 
down the barrier raised by a bleak training which set his 
family apart from the common lot. Elizabeth would 
teach him how to meet the herd maybe. His beastly 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


23 


pride would not always be on the defensive. With such 
a wife, what might he not accomplish! His heart beat 
fiercely within him as he strode with swift feet into the 
frosty night. Again, Elizabeth seemed to be swinging 
along at his side and this time he was saying to her the 
thoughts that were burning in his heart. 

Twenty-four hours later Arch received a reply to his 
dozen questions. Elizabeth’s letter read: 

“Where live? Better keep your apartment, a refuge 
when you write your solemn essays on the present 
degenerate age. I shall run Blowmedown for Aunt Fan, 
but otherwise, I am prepared to adapt myself to your 
wishes. 

“Wedding trip? If you will take me to the Canadian 
woods, yes. 

“Hour? Whenever you wish. 

“St. John St. John? Would it mean anything? 

“Red roses? Aunt Fan loves them. 

“Family invitations? All you like: why don’t you 
phone? 

“Seven other questions. You decide. It makes no 
difference to me. 

“Elizabeth Duncan. 

“P.S. 

“I write short, for you will soon have so very-too-much 
of me. I find myself already pitying you, sometimes 
saying, ‘poor Arch!’ 

“I am working eighteen hours a day, to finish my book 
before the twenty-fifth. 

“ ‘The Lily Pond’ has gone into its fourth edition ! ! ! 

“If you decide on the Canadian woods, take your fur 


24 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


coat, and don’t forget the accessories. That means a 
fur cap with ear lappets, mittens, etc.” 

Archibald was more troubled and puzzled by this letter 
than he himself thought to be reasonable. 


CHAPTER IV 


Elizabeth shunted the management of her wedding 
with its amazing intricacies upon Evelyn Fordyce, a Slater 
cousin, who was an interior decorator, not by training, 
but by audacity. She was an inherently competent 
person whose lack of technical schooling didn’t matter 
so very much, at least the family said it didn’t matter. 
And they were indisputably right, for Evelyn commanded 
the highest fees, holding her services to Elizabeth reason¬ 
able at a thousand dollars and all expenses defrayed. 
With the confidence of the overbred, she imposed the 
inherited traditions and the inherited tastes of an 
unimaginative but arrogant race upon a grateful people. 
To her astonishment, her impositions did not seem to 
mean anything to Madame Duncan or to her niece. 
They were courteous, they were acquiescent even, but 
they remained indifferent. Both of them appeared to 
be quite oblivious to the great honor conferred upon the 
Duncan family by the Slater alliance. 

One crystalline morning Elizabeth rose impatiently 
from a riot of enchanting bandboxes, each containing a 
desirable hat from Rachel’s. She was willing to wear 
them all. That would please Monsieur and his tiny 
French wife, who contributed her maiden name to the 
business. But she counted twenty. There was con¬ 
fusion in the number and, on the whole, she thought she 
preferred one. 

“You decide for me, Evelyn,” she said, happy to extri- 
25 


26 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


cate herself from another problem, “then mark on the 
covers the appropriate occasion for each. February we 
are to be in town. There will be parties, I suppose, and 
visits. Married people in New York still go to church? 
I went once when I was visiting your people in Boston. 
We walked. Madame Slater took my arm and the clan 
sagged after in twos. She said all the old Boston families 
who have any influence attend church every Sunday, 
even rainy ones. It was subduing to see how, with their 
Sunday hats and coats, they put on a called-by-the-angels 
expression which made the beautiful ones look like 
stained glass, English glass, and how, with the return 
home, their sainthood slipped away from them. By 
the middle of dinner they were saying angry things to 
each other. That glorious oldest son, who looks like 
a Greek god and who has the soul of a minnow, lost 
his temper and said, ‘Shut up/ to his mother. It is 
funny about Sunday clothes; they no longer make the 
best variety, except in Boston and country villages. Now 
you and I who are emancipated-” 

“But I’m not emancipated,” Evelyn interrupted 
angrily. 

Whereupon Elizabeth slipped into her moleskin coat 
and made a dash for the open, happy to have broken 
through Evelyn’s interminable complacency, even at the 
expense of her own good manners. Then she wondered 
if, by some distortion of her complexes, her repressed 
self were not, when fighting against the domination of 
Evelyn Fordyce, in reality fighting against the ascen¬ 
dency of Archibald Slater. There were hours when 
Elizabeth found psychology a downright nuisance. She 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


27 


was glad at least to shut away the memory of wrapping 
paper that crackled and took forbidding shapes all over 
things and masses of tissue paper which fell in rabbit¬ 
shaped bunches out of every package that entered the 
house. 

Each time Woodis, the butcher’s son, who had volun¬ 
teered his services for this special occasion, came up the 
hill with a cartload of boxes his pride seemed to increase. 
And each time he came Loong Li gave him a dollar and 
a cup of boiling tea. When Elizabeth reached the lower 
floor she found him delivering his eighth load. His 
feeling of importance had so increased she feared that, 
like the poor frog, he would burst. “Don’t dare to bring 
me any more,” she commanded. 

“I must,” the boy declared. “This box alone is 
insured for five hundred dollars. It is worth more than 
our new Ford. You’d better look out it isn’t stolen. 
I’m coming again. I’ve got to. Shucks! You don’t 
reckon Bent Rogers and me would leave such valuable 
objects in our out-of-the-way, one horse station, do you? 
That’s not how we run our business.” 

With these last boastful words, Woodis placed tri¬ 
umphantly on the flagging a long box marked, “Haste. 
Fragile. This side up.” It contained, Elizabeth guessed, 
the soft, white, shimmering material she had bought 
three weeks before, now converted into an enchanting 
gown by the cunning Monsieur Rachel and his tiny 
wife. When opened, out would pop a hundred more 
white tissue paper rabbits and again the floor would be 
strewn with brown paper and knotted strings. She fled 
into the open. 


28 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Outside the fields were a bright, glittering white, the 
sky a relentless blue. She put on her skis and slid down 
the icy surface of the hill to the grey barn. The granary 
was below zero. She lighted the oil stove by the green 
chest and, snuggling deep into her friendly furs, settled 
to work. The book lagged. The wedding had inter¬ 
rupted. Even when she deliberately shunted all inter¬ 
ruptions and did with her hours as she saw fit, the 
wedding interrupted. A smouldering excitement turned 
her heart to live coals and sent little tremors through her 
inmost physical being. Her restlessness gained head¬ 
way as she wrote with numb fingers slipping swiftly over 
the cold keys of her typewriter. She clip-clopped im¬ 
patiently and with a mad acceleration of speed. But she 
did not know what she was writing and when she looked 
back over her evenly typed pages her sentences trickled 
through the top of her mind without meaning. She 
frowned angrily and stopped. 

There was a letter from Archibald Satterlee in her 
coat pocket—the third letter in two days—a repetition, 
likely. Why read it? Better tear the letter into ten 
thousand million pieces, she thought, and shut him 
entirely out of her life. To give up some one you 
know to be splendid is punishment. How well God 
knows how to destroy happiness! Elizabeth slid open a 
frost-covered window and let the unread letter float, 
bit by bit, down towards a sombre hemlock that stood 
close to the frozen pool and a clump of ghostly beeches. 
A cruel waste, she thought, as she gave to the barren 
spaces of the Pinnacle, the unknown precious words of 
Archibald Satterlee. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


29 


“You are right, darling Aunt Fan,” Elizabeth cried 
aloud, “but can I end it? I don’t know how. It is 
bravado, tearing up the letters. It isn’t remorse, exactly, 
but I feel it is unfair to Arch.” 

The last scrap of floating paper dipped, rose straight 
toward the zenith, and then dropped behind the dark 
evergreen and was lost. Down in the gully the ice- 
encrusted branches of the forest trees were tinkling ever 
so gently. A flock of blue jays rose brilliantly from the 
hemlock and sped with a raucous yank! yank! yank! 
past the grey barn. As their jeers grew less distinct 
Elizabeth heard a gay, clear whistle in the woodland 
below—one low note followed by five high, the last 
prolonged in a clear, thin thread of sound. 

Snapping free an icicle from the window-ledge, Eliza¬ 
beth sucked it till the twisted muscles of her throat 
relaxed and she could make the recall, five high and one 
an interval lower. But no human being a rod away 
could hear her. She listened again, and again she heard 
the call down the valley. Incredible, incredible as the 
shining stars in heaven, the roses by the wayside, the 
pounding combers along the shore—incredible as all 
beautiful happenings in a grey, hedged-in world. Some¬ 
where, near her, in the ice-bound valley, was Archibald 
Satterlee. He had come down from the Maine woods 
to see her, Elizabeth Duncan. Swiftly she put on her 
skis and slid over the glittering crust. And now she 
could make the return call quite easily. The song 
became antiphonal. Then she saw Satterlee. He was 
standing close to a beech tree, his head slightly bent, 
as one listening. Even in his hunting clothes he looked 


30 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


thin and elfish like the grey monarch against whose 
bole he was slightly leaning. 

“Darling Elizabeth!” 

Elizabeth let her eyes rest for a second on Satterlee’s, 
then looked with wonder at the silvery woodland and 
pasture on every side and again turned to him. He was 
just the same—all light and daring. “I came at last,” 
she said happily. 

“Just as I had abandoned hope and was trying pain¬ 
fully to reconstruct my life on the basis of no Elizabeth, 
you came.” 

“Just as I had solemnly vowed never to think of you 
again, I heard your call.” 

“And just as I was about to retreat with black sorrow 
in my heart, I heard your elfin whistle.” 

“I put on my skis and came down to you over the 
sparkling snows.” 

“And I stood in the glittering woodland, when-” 

A furious gust of wind swept off the crest of a snow¬ 
drift and flung hard, stinging flakes in their faces. 
Satterlee’s mood changed. “Yesterday,” he said, “I had 
a hand in saving a boy from drowning. He went through 
the ice. My impulse was to follow. Instead, I manifested 
a decent sense of courage and pulled him out. Cui bono?” 
he added bitterly. 

Elizabeth, unwilling to follow this up, said shortly, 
“Won’t you come up to the house and get something 
hot?” 

“I can’t overcome my repugnance to the Fordyce. I 
hope never to see Emily again.” 

“There is no necessity,” Elizabeth agreed, as she made 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


31 


a muff of the ends of her coat sleeves. The cold was 
death to romance. Her hands and feet were balls of 
ice. More snow began to sift down from an evenly grey 
sky. Relentless winds were ripping and snapping the 
branches of the forest trees. Archibald Satterlee had 
travelled five hundred miles to see her and for what? 
“Cui bono?” she asked herself despairingly. “Why, why 
are you here?” she demanded. “I wrote you not to 
come, begged you not. Why did you?” 

Satterlee, who was still leaning against the beech tree, 
moved his melancholy eyes to meet Elizabeth’s. Other¬ 
wise he did not stir. 

“I can’t give you up,” he said slowly. “Your friend¬ 
ship—I want the beauty of it. Don’t you see, Elizabeth, 
that’s it? I am not even sure that I think we can give 
each other up. So what am I to do when I don’t think 
we can? The world was so dreary and commonplace 
before we met. I never did anything before I knew you. 
I never shall again, if I lose you. Marriage is not for me: 
is it for you? Because there is a Kate Satterlee and a 
thousand responsibilities tugging at my back, according 
to the law and wisdom of a dead generation, I am cut 
off from the natural happiness that is rightfully mine. 
The way you live and think is the way I live and 
think. We enjoy the same kind of things and in the 
same way. All I ask is that you remain free of entangle¬ 
ments. I have never asked you for more. I never shall.” 

Elizabeth turned her back against the persistent, slow- 
moving wind. Like life, it was terrifying. Both plucked 
things from their rightful settings, dashed them against 
cruel objects and finally destroyed them whether they 


32 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


were human beings or merely twigs from a beech tree. 

Again Satterlee said passionately, “Elizabeth, I love 
you.” 

“Perhaps I am too self-centered to be in love with 
anyone.” Elizabeth’s voice sagged as she spoke. “Oh! 
I don’t know. I love you both. I don’t care much 
about marriage, but Arch wants me and I have promised.” 

“Damn Archibald Slater!” 

“I am frightened,” Elizabeth confessed, “tremendously 
frightened.” 

“You are frightened to break a wrong promise.” 

“I am frightened lest I destroy Arch. He lives for 
principles that you and I don’t know exist, and he has 
a towering, glorified love for duty which I but vaguely 
understand.” 

“Then stop now.” 

“I can’t stop. I don’t even know that I want to stop. 
Arch is exciting, his temper-” 

“See here, Elizabeth Duncan,” Satterlee shouted 
against the wind, “you are doing for yourself what I did 
for myself ten years ago. And now, just for an inherited, 
smouldering New England idea, you and I are cut 
out of paradise. It’s devilishly futile.” 

“I may be a mid-Vic after all,” Elizabeth declared. 
“I can’t be just third or fourth to any man, or one of 
many bobbins whose gold he uses to weave some 
resplendent pattern of his own caprice. I am without 
experience and you, who have had so much, play with 
your own destiny, make of your days an exquisite game. 
I love the way you play. But first I have to know that 
the play road is the best road. Perhaps, sometime, I 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


33 


shall be glad to sit with you in the great wide spaces 
with the daisies and buttercups at our feet and the 
purple hills beyond. Maybe we will sit in the sun and 
spin together.” 

Satterlee felt his mind grow numb with anger while 
his body congealed with the intense cold. Here was 
another beautiful possibility in life gone bally-hack. 
Elizabeth was his by the light of human companion¬ 
ship and by the happy development of his best powers. 
To lose her was to lose the savor of life. “Damn Slater! 
Damn him!” he repeated. But beyond this his mind 
would no longer work. 

Elizabeth bent to put on her skis. Then she paused, 
a grey dot of human woe, lost in the glittering forest. 
“Please,” she said, holding out a small hand. 

But Satterlee could not conquer his anger. 

On her solitary way up the hill Elizabeth faced the 
North. The beauty and the light from the trees were 
gone. So it would be the rest of her life, just as it 
always had been before she had known Archibald Satter¬ 
lee—without glamour, with long drab spaces of yearly 
rounds. She had seen other women rush gaily about, 
then suddenly fall into a groove and stop dead. She 
wondered if she, too, were destined to do the same, 
abandon the open road with its windy hills and blue 
skies for dainty wall papers and tidy rows of aluminum 
pots and fifteen-dollars-a-bottle perfumery, French of 
course—and sleep. 


CHAPTER V 


At Blowmedown, Madame Duncan and Elizabeth had 
formed the habit of sitting in the low flagged hall on 
the basement floor, because of the collies, they believed. 
But Aunt Fan enjoyed the quaintness of this room which 
once had been the buttery. She was fond of saying the 
house had three birthdays of which the colonial base¬ 
ment was its first. On dignified occasions, however, she 
preferred the upper hall with its more conventional 
fittings. She sat there Christmas morning, prepared to 
receive the mother of Archibald Slater. On a low stand 
by her side were two books: “Proposed Roads to Free¬ 
dom,” by Bertram Russel, and “The Psychology of 
Insanity,” by Bernard Hart. 

“Won’t you read them, Aunt Fan,” Elizabeth had said, 
“so we can talk the same language? They will help you 
to understand life. The human race is half crazy. Hart 
explains the craziness.” 

Madame Duncan had read them and they seemed to 
her, for the most part, old thoughts put into a new 
vocabulary. But she realized her mind was no longer 
elastic or quick to receive new impressions. In her 
youth, psychology in its modem interpretation had not 
yet been reduced to a science, neither had it been popu¬ 
larized for the common use of common minds. But basic 
laws were the same. Once she had read with her father 
the Greek classics in the original. She had believed 
herself to be intellectual. She knew she had intellectual 
• 34 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


35 


tastes. Her father had drilled into her the difference 
between feeling and thinking. Now, at eighty, Eliza¬ 
beth had taken her education in hand. The modern 
psychoanalysts she found bewildering and, not infre¬ 
quently, they stirred her anger. Freudianism with its 
warfare upon repressions she considered retrogression. 

“But if it is the truth,” Elizabeth insisted, “it can’t 
lead otherwise than ahead.” 

Any repression put Elizabeth into a white heat. Her 
creed of liberty at any price had been responsible for 
her running around Connecticut in her knickerbockers 
and shocking the veterans by her wild adventures. It 
would make more serious trouble for her with the Slaters. 
Madame Duncan trembled for her future. While she 
sat by the fire and waited, with a sweet patience that 
seemed an inborn characteristic of her nature, so lessoned 
had she become in the final requirement imposed upon 
the aged, that of waiting, she thought of Archibald with 
his love of law and of Archibald’s distinguished mother, a 
Bostonian of high quality. They could never understand 
Elizabeth. Life was cruel to demand it of them. And 
Elizabeth? Sometime Elizabeth would appear a pariah 
in their eyes; Elizabeth who could prove so incisively 
to her own soul that the duty of self-expression was 
the first duty of life, would be counted criminal. Madame 
Duncan closed her eyes and prayed to the God of her 
youth. Her prayers were for her beloved niece. 

It seemed to Madame Duncan that the wedding guests 
were slow in coming. Loong Li entered the room and 
rebuilt the fire. He opened a Chinese screen with 
temple decorations and placed it behind her chair. Her 


36 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Angora shawl had slipped to the floor. This he lifted 
and folded gently about her shoulders. Finally, he 
replenished the water in a Ming vase filled with violets. 
Every motion he made showed profound respect. It was 
her glorious age that he revered. 

Though Madame Duncan found Loong Li’s attentions 
excessively annoying, she suffered them graciously as 
was her custom of suffering many things. She still pre¬ 
ferred doing to being done for; serving to being served. 
But the Chinaman was persistent in his attentions and 
she found her power of resistance negligible. In fact her 
kind world combined to deprive her of legitimate means 
of exercise. She was happy, she told herself, that she 
was still permitted to lift her food with her own hand 
to her own mouth. 

The clocks in the house ticked another hour of life 
away before Madame Duncan heard the sounds of 
arrival. At last there was a stamping of snow-clogged 
feet on the stone flagging below, followed by wild 
barkings of San Souci. Ten more minutes passed; then 
Elizabeth appeared. She was alone. 

“You were gone so long I half feared you had run 
away.” Madame Duncan spoke seriously, Elizabeth 
noticed, startled as she often was by Aunt Fan’s com¬ 
plete understanding of her moods. 

“Early this morning I thought of it,” she admitted. 
“A life promise is something to make one pause. But 
here I am.” 

Elizabeth walked swiftly down the long, narrow room 
with its unbroken length of windows facing the south 
and then again back to Aunt Fan. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


37 


“If there were only you in the world to love, I’d be 
contented,” she said. “Oh! Arch telephoned he won’t 
be up till the four o’clock. He brings carloads of family 
with him—mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, 
cousins, nephews—the entire Slater clan, I think. He 
chartered a train from Boston. The switching must 
drive the Hartford and New Haven Railroad demented. 
But think of the honor conferred upon it! If an acci¬ 
dent should befall them what would become of Boston? 
They should have been distributed in various express 
trains and locals.” 

Elizabeth walked restlessly about. “You have a ripping 
fire in here,” she said to fill up a gap. “I am glad it is 
snowing hard.” Then she slipped down on her knees and 
bent over the resinous flames. “How sensible to insist 
on pitch-pine. I wonder if it actually comes from Cali¬ 
fornia. It is bitter cold and I neglected to inform the 
weather bureau about Madame Slater’s journey. It 
would doubtless have given us sunshine if it had known 
of the honor.” 

Elizabeth buried her head in her arms and listened to 
the storm. She felt that if she didn’t make a tremendous 
effort she might shriek aloud. The wind, singing in 
minor thirds about the ancient stone chimney, not so very 
far above her head, sounded like distant notes of a flute. 
She wondered if any of her ancestresses had ever sat by 
the fire as she now sat, and heard the same tragic wind- 
song and felt that her heart would break, as she did now 
—and for as little reason. Struggling to recover her¬ 
self, Elizabeth rose and faced Madame Duncan. She 
seemed frail and lonely, left out of the day’s great doings. 


38 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth decided to let the things that ought to be 
done go undone and to stay awhile with Aunt Fan. 

“I am spoiling to tell you about Grey Whack,” Eliza¬ 
beth said, as she drew a chair close to Aunt Fan and 
began automatically to turn the heel of a woolen sock. 
“I’d done so long ago if I hadn’t been swamped by gifts. 
Colonial heirlooms mostly, treasured objects, demanding 
stately, though no matter how perfunctory, letters of 
acknowledgment. And I have been troubled by Archi¬ 
bald Satterlee. My getting married is beastly for him. 
The suppressed subconscious part of me is, I suppose, 
half in love with Archibald. What vile tricks one’s 
subconscious self plays with one!” 

“And according to your chosen psychologists, nine- 
tenths of your mind is subconscious. Don’t you think 
that is a good deal to give to the man you don’t marry?” 

There was a quaver in Madame Duncan’s voice that 
hit Elizabeth to attention. She had again been feeding 
Aunt Fan unpredigested facts. “Oh! I exaggerated,” she 
said. “Only I wouldn’t choose to hurt him more than 
life naturally hurts, when you are in wrong. He keeps 
telegraphing me painful messages, uses the upper key¬ 
board of his Corona, both extravagant and foolish. I 
never gave him a promise of any kind, or encouraged 
him, except possibly in letters. You write a thing down 
in transient mood and there it stands, forever shouting 
back at you a fact. Writing is a temptation. I can 
write such beautiful letters. They make him happy. 
That is something he needs, happiness. He never learned 
Mrs. Slater’s philosophy: that it isn’t any vast conse¬ 
quence whether you are happy or not, or how other 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


39 


people treat you, but it makes all the difference to you 
how you treat other people. Oh, she is a snob!” 

“What reason have you for saying that?” 

Elizabeth dropped a whole line of stitches, jammed 
the mutilated sock back into its bag and looked" straight 
at Aunt Fan. She was moving her hands slightly, a 
mark of fatigue or anxiety. It would be better to steer 
away from Archibald Satterlee altogether, she thought. 
“The Frosts,” she answered. “They are as much cousins 
as the magnificent others. They are the only ones she 
failed to invite to the wedding of her adored eldest. I 
asked her why she left them off our list and she said 
she didn’t feel it incumbent upon her to invite cousins 
once removed and, in any case, she could not believe 
they cared to be asked. I sent invitations just the same 
and they are here. There are two of them, Scotch-tweedy 
girls with Scotch-tweedy hair and skins. They have 
angular motions and cheerful, loud voices. They italicize 
their speech and at rather too frequent intervals they 
say gosh.” 

Elizabeth pushed away from the fire and waited. If 
Aunt Fan wanted more monologue, she had loads of the 
same sort. In the meanwhile she found it sweet just to 
sit beside her in silence. 

“You began to tell me about Grey Whack,” Madame 
Duncan reminded her niece after a time, for she found 
conversation a relief to her foreboding spirit. 

“It is already full of guests. Didn’t I tell you I 
gave the rejuvenation of the house to Evelyn? She is 
the cleverest human being in the world. But the entire 
Slater clan are clever. She murescoed all the inside of 


40 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the house there is, except the floors, which she painted. 
The attic rooms are canary yellow, the second floor 
grey and Chinese blue, and the first just grey. She 
built out of planks, torn away from the old barns, two 
enormous square tables for the dining room and covered 
them with black oilcloth and in the center of each, she 
put a big brass bowl filled with spikes of foxgloves— 
forced of course. You would be surprised to see 

how-” Elizabeth jumped as she heard the telephone 

bell ring peremptorily. There might be still another 
message from Archibald Satterlee. But Aunt Fan had 
not noticed and so she continued. “The room is heated 
by a huge coal stove with isinglass all around it and it is 
named Aladdin. The whole house is miraculously warm 
and pleasantly lighted and furnished. Evelyn persuaded 
two teahouses, closed for the winter, to rent out their 
furniture and for a dizzying sum of money induced a 
shop in Harlem to send up two van loads of mattresses 
and cot beds. She assures me she can make all the wed¬ 
ding guests entirely comfortable.” 

Loong Li tapped gently on the door. 

“ It is a telephone from Arch,” Elizabeth explained 
five minutes later. “The Slaters have reached the port, 
unharmed. They are waiting to be shunted to the 
branch line.” Then, having returned to her knitting, 
she again resumed her description. 

“And—and here comes a romance! A giant of a 
Woodis, one of the butcher Woodises, helped in the 
reconstruction. He used enormous whitewash brushes 
and gulped the work whole. He has shown himself mar¬ 
vellously useful and so have the two Frost girls. Evelyn 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


41 


got the Scotch-tweedies down to help and I pay them as 
much as she can induce them to accept. This morning 
Evelyn told me that Polly, the younger one, and the 
Woodis are engaged. ‘Marriage, of course, is the natural 
solution,’ Evelyn said, and would I very much mind 
having a butcher’s son in the family. She was over¬ 
whelmingly humble, for she felt that somehow she had 
not been adequate to the situation.” 

Again the telephone rang. 

“The Slaters have left Bridgeport,” Elizabeth told 
Aunt Fan, while she argued to herself that the frequent 
messages could only mean that Arch was nervous. “He, 
too!” she thought. “Well, of course! A logical reflex.” 

Aunt Fan looked very pale. 

Elizabeth continued in a monotonous voice intended 
to be soothing. “I told Evelyn if she could convert Grey 
Whack into a house for crippled soldiers and make of it 
at the same time an arts and crafts school of some sort, 
the new Woodis family might have charge of the house 
and garden end.” 

Still again the telephone rang, and Loong Li, the soft- 
footed, brought a neatly written message from Evelyn. 

“It is from Archibald, the other Archibald. A Corona 
cipher,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t believe I will read it 
now.” And she dropped the folded slip into a tiny work- 
basket on Madame Duncan’s table. 

“Funny how all the Slater cousins wanted to come to 
the wedding. Evelyn says the story got broadcast that 
I was to be married in white satin knickerbockers. Pos¬ 
sibly that brought them. The composite clan is distinctly 
homely, but there is a certain complacent style about 


42 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


them that is overwhelming. They contradict each other 
and jeer and interrupt, but I don’t believe they would 
stand much from an outsider. They are rude to their 
elders and I am truly shocked, and I say ‘the devil’ and 
other naughty words and they are horrified. In close 
phalanx, they look at me with alarm. Many of the 
women smoke, but that is because they live up to their 
English traditions. I don’t imagine that any of them 
boil, or are what I would call in any way modern. Now 
these are only the once-removeds. When the main line 
from Boston-” 

Elizabeth again rose abruptly and walked the length 
of the room. Her heart had begun to beat madly, vainly 
endeavoring to keep pace with the French clock on the 
mantel. 

There was no sense in her being so nervous. She 
dreamed of escape. Promptly she suppressed this desire. 
Like other suppressions, the day would come when it 
would break loose and give her trouble. 

“The real ones fasten their clothes together with safety 
pins, bang doors and slop around in badly made chiffon 
gowns. They gulp their food and are systematically 
rude. The real ones are Boston: not typical Boston, 
still all the more distinguished for being atypical, and 
some way you find yourself liking the whole clan 
tremendously.” 

“They are good,” Aunt Fan said. “The time will 
come when you will appreciate goodness.” 

“You are good and I appreciate you. You are darling! 
There is no one—no one who can ever-” 

Elizabeth stopped short. “The Slaters are coming up 




FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


43 


the hill,” she said. “Do you hear the sleigh bells? They 
are the old-fashioned kind that are put on a leather band 
like a saddle girth. Evelyn unearthed them from the 
stanchion sheds.” 

“Don’t you think you would better go down and meet 
Madame Slater?” Aunt Fan asked quietly. 

Elizabeth turned her panic-stricken eyes away from 
Madame Duncan and went toward the door. 

Madame Duncan heard her cross the hall and start 
down the stone stairway, and then she heard her stifled 
cry, “Arch! Arch!” lost in his passionate “Elizabeth!” 

Evelyn Fordyce had again given evidence of her 
habitual foresight and tact. She had switched Madame 
Slater and the other wedding guests from the Boston 
special over to Grey Whack. 

At four o’clock, the snow had stopped falling and by 
seven the thermometer had dropped thirty degrees. The 
hill was swiftly freezing to death. Even the beams in the 
roof shrank and snapped in the cold. The moon, which 
rose large and round as in October, cast Prussian blue 
shadows across the snow and sent a transcendent lane of 
light up the driveway between two shaggy rows of 
pointed pines which stood still and stark in the frosty 
night. 

Elizabeth, now in wedding array, softly reentered the 
living room to show Aunt Fan her shimmering gown and 
her magical veil which fell about her and flowed away 
from her in mysterious fashion. With shy impulse, she 
paused by the long window and looked down at Grey 
Whack, now glowing with light and alive with the jingling 
of sleigh bells and the incessant toot of a stranded motor 


44 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


car. Half a mile below was the little white church on the 
Common where she was so soon to make some rather 
preposterous vows to Arch. St. John St. John was to 
officiate. He was the one inefficient spot of the evening, 
Evelyn Fordyce having made everything else perfect and 
to the complete comfort of the exacting Slaters. Eliza¬ 
beth caught her breath. The hour was more solemn 
than she had believed such an hour could be. 

It had been thought best that Madame Duncan should 
not be exposed to the cold. She would not be present to 
hear St. John St. John mumble through the marriage 
service. Elizabeth was not sorry to spare her this. Shiv¬ 
ering a little, she turned away from the window and came 
down to the fireplace, her silvery garments trailing deli¬ 
cately after her over the dark floor. 

“ Do you like it?” she said. 

“ You are beautiful.” 

Elizabeth stooped swiftly and kissed Aunt Fan, then 
she passed out of the room, down the stone stairway and 
so on into the night. 

There followed the cold drive, the glowing church, 
strange minor music, imported from Boston, the mum¬ 
blings and the grumblings of St. John St. John and then 
the vow. Elizabeth could never recall distinctly what 
happened. Out of the haze there rose as a rock out of 
sea mist, one ineradicable memory, the promise she had 
given Archibald Slater. 

Evelyn had arranged for a very grand supper at 
Grey Whack. When Elizabeth and Arch came into the 
spacious dining room, the Slater family with its mighty 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


45 


bulwarks had already assembled. They were three rings 
deep around the Aladdin stove. They sat in rows on the 
low pine benches against the walls, or they were piling 
the corners of the room high with their evening coats and 
flapping galoshes. Across the hall, there was music 
where still other Slaters and Fordyces were dancing. 

People spoke of Elizabeth and Archibald as if they 
were dead. The ceremony seemed to have removed them 
to some distant star. “Isn’t he splendid!” Elizabeth 
heard someone say. “He looks like a Greek god.—She is 
really respectable.—Oh! Quite!—She seems more like a 
boy than a bride.—Look at her Roman jaw.—Hard to 
hold.—She will give Archibald the run for his money.— 
Don’t use slang.—If you call that slang, you ought to 
hear her speak. Damn is mild.—How vulgar!-” 

In accordance with Evelyn’s most exact arrangements, 
Arch and Elizabeth stood in front of a table, flaring with 
candles and truly marvellous with a forty-pound wed¬ 
ding cake. Dancing ended, and the young Slaters and 
Godkins and Fordyces crowded into the room. Then the 
orchestra began to play an old and oddly familiar tune, 
and the guests burst into the “Star Spangled Banner.” 
It seemed so ridiculous to Elizabeth she feared she 
might have hysterics. She cut the cake, instead, using 
the great knife provided by Woodis and Woodis, and she 
made beautiful thin slices, determined there should be 
a piece for everyone. As she cut, the circle of clansmen 
crowded about the table and sang Christmas carols. The 
shadows in the room seemed to throb with the music and 
the swaying singers. Suddenly they stopped, and Steven 



46 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Slater, leaping upon the table, shouted, “To Archibald 
and his wife, Elizabeth! May they drink deep of the 
wine of life and-” 

Loong Li touched Elizabeth’s arm. “Madame Dun¬ 
can, she-” 

Elizabeth dropped the thin bladed knife she wielded 
so skillfully and ran from the room, flinging her trailing 
garments over her arm as she went. She rushed down 
the hall and out the heavy front door, down the slippery 
snowpath and up the hill to the stone house. Arch fol¬ 
lowed the shimmering white figure, scarcely more real 
than the moonlight on the snow. The house door stood 
open, a pale yellow blotch in the blue night. Elizabeth 
dashed through the entrance and up the stone stairway. 
For a second she paused in the cold hall and shook her 
garments straight. “I must not disturb Aunt Fan,” she 
said to Arch. 

But Aunt Fan could never again be disturbed. 




Part II 

THE LONG TRAIL 





CHAPTER I 


For the eighth January, Elizabeth found herself in 
Boston being entertained by the Slaters. Each wind¬ 
blown visit she decided would be her last. But Arch 
wished his children to have the benefit of living for a time 
with their serene grandmother and so to please him 
she had gone. Nice in her distinctions, Elizabeth felt 
that Madame Slater’s nature was placid rather than 
serene. She would be glad to pound her face with a 
mallet till it was flexible like Aunt Fan’s. She ought 
to be choked and flung on the ash heap for such impulses, 
she believed, and each succeeding year she struggled to 
see in the children’s grandmother that true beauty of 
character which had distinguished Aunt Fan from her 
kind. This memory of Aunt Fan had so held her 
to the straight and narrow path, not heavenward as she 
had been taught, but into barren spaces, very much like 
the arid deserts so graphically described in her son’s 
nature books. 

The mighty Slater family with its clan exclusiveness 
and its clan arrogance and its clan rudeness made life 
for the in-laws somewhat difficult. Madame Slater had 
but lately constructed in the Fenway a tribal house 
which the entire family with a highly developed posses¬ 
sive quality appeared to own. It had been designed and 
furnished by a distinguished Back Bay architect and the 
clan had not yet ceased to be impressed by its grandeur 
49 


50 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


or to feel superior because of its magnificence. The 
architect, who was an enthusiastic Georgian, had made 
for them a big, thick kind of a house with elaborate 
carvings and moulded plaster ceilings. This he filled 
with Georgian furniture, the clumsiest part of which the 
Slaters had brought from England. Derby vases deco¬ 
rated the Adams’ mantelpieces and cut glass chandeliers 
hung from high ceilings. Both the drawing rooms were 
furnished with upholstered chairs and settles, destitute 
of springs. Heavy striped curtains hung at the windows 
in pipe-like folds, while scarves finished with fringe 
were drawn across the tops of them, being caught 
up at the ends and in the middle by heavy cords. In 
the center there hung from the same cord, or was it 
another—Elizabeth could never successfully follow its 
loopings—a thick tassel like a bell. There was much joy 
over these curtains in the Slater family and a chain of 
congratulatory conversations. It seemed odd in people 
who made Ruskin their creed and quoted voluminously 
from “The Seven Lamps.” Slater conversations on art 
were embarrassing and dull. In vain she admired the 
Crown-Derby plates, the Wedgewood vases, the Leeds 
cream jugs, the four-poster bed in which she slept, with 
its delicately fluted shafts and its japanned cornice, 
painted with garlands of pink and yellow roses. It was 
not enough. The Slaters were never satisfied. After two 
years of suspended judgment, the pronouncement went 
forth. “Elizabeth, poor girl, has no taste. Artistically, 
she is undeveloped.” They said this in their frank, 
decisive way to Elizabeth, for that was merely fair, to say 
things to people, not about people. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


51 


“I am so lacking,” Elizabeth sighed, “ that I don’t 
even like the word artistic. It irritates me.” 

Even so, Julianna, the only daughter of the clan, said, 
“I don’t see how you can help loving Fenway House and 
I know you don’t, I can tell by your expression.” 

“I do like the china,” Elizabeth apologized for the 
twentieth time and there the subject rested, only to be 
hauled up the following January. Not to give the 
desired praise seemed to Elizabeth clumsy, even idiotic. 
But she did not dare to venture on the road of flattery, 
lest she be caught napping and forever after be written 
down a liar. 

If the difference had ended with the house, life in Jan¬ 
uary would have been easier for both Madame Slater and 
Elizabeth, as both women were ready to ignore dif¬ 
ferences; Madame Slater for the sake of the family and 
Elizabeth in the cause of peace. Neither of them was 
inclined to place things in the same category with acts 
or principles. 

The differences were fundamental. As the two women 
sat in the stately east bedroom, fashioned after a design 
for a Hanoverian prince and dedicated by Madame Slater 
to her sons’ wives and their princelings, Elizabeth 
remarked, “Arch and I have decided not to have any 
more children. Four is all we can manage.” 

Madame Slater dropped her knitting and looked 
sternly out into a stern world. “You and Arch have 
decided!” 

“Didn’t you and Mr. Slater decide?” Elizabeth asked 
in breathless amazement. 

“No!” 


52 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth felt shot to fragments at this definite answer. 

“But—you had only five.” 

“That was what God allotted us.” 

After all, perhaps the Slaters were favored of the 
Almighty. God was usually not so considerate in his 
allotments. She clutched the arms of her chair and so 
controlled an inconvenient tendency to laugh, while she 
said to herself, “Be careful, Elizabeth, she is my poor 
little ducks’ grandmother. She is the only grandmother 
they can ever have.” 

Having waited until an ancient herdic rattled up the 
street, Elizabeth tried again. “Greenleaf lost another 
tooth, Anne Preston says.” 

By this time Madame Slater was knitting quite 
methodically. “How many baby teeth has Greenleaf 
left?” she asked in her clear judicial voice. 

“I don’t know.” 

“Don’t know! Surely you have kept a baby book. 
Haven’t you kept one for each of the children?” 

“No.” 

“But, my dear, you have been very remiss. How can 
anyone know what happened to him, when he was an 
infant? He can’t be expected to remember.” 

“Teeth and hair cuttings and weights. It isn’t an 
interesting subject, now is it?” 

“Not interesting!” 

Again Madame Slater dropped her knitting. 

Elizabeth had time to remember the portentous 
morocco books presented to each of her babies at his 
birth, by Madame Slater. The damnable part of running 
a nursery for four was the vast multitude of details. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


53 


Elizabeth, who didn’t sew or crochet or knit anything but 
soldiers’ socks, folded her hands and waited. And while 
she waited in a cold, cutting atmosphere, so easily created 
by her mother-in-law, she thought futilely of the morocco 
books, accurately stamped with the inherited ancestral 
names—Archibald Godkin Slater, Seymour Adams Slater, 
Higgins Greenleaf Slater, Frances Duncan Slater. There 
was only a small book for Frances Duncan, who was only 
a girl and, being the first-born, a despised baby. Some¬ 
what later Arch had added the name Elizabeth, and the 
boys had made it with their imperfect speech Lize, and 
Lize it would remain until she had run out her allotted 
span. 

Elizabeth suppressed a yawn. In half an hour it would 
be luncheon time and Madame Slater, who was visiting 
her in her own room would go away. In half an hour 
they would sit down to a luncheon of cold meat and salad 
and green peas. Peas in mid-winter was the constantly 
repeated surprise it was permissible to exclaim over. 
“Fresh peas in January! How remarkable! Really, the 
Boston markets-” “Not at all! Our old French gar¬ 

dener, Guy, grew them.” Otherwise, one didn’t talk 
about one’s food. 

Her thoughts turned drearily inward. She didn’t like 
belonging to a family. Not so very far off the Charles 
River was winding its way to freedom. If she were that 
river she would not move quite so sluggishly through 
Boston. 

Madame Slater finally looked up from her counting. 
Elizabeth sat erect and silent on a hard Georgian chair. 
She had the quality of absolute repose which Madame 


54 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Slater wrongly attributed to her nature, only vaguely 
sensing the patience and persistence she had taken to 
acquire such perfect quiet. Elizabeth hadn’t changed 
much since her marriage, she thought. There was a 
slight mark of repression about her mouth and on her 
brow that suggested suffering, but she still had the 
muscular, boyish figure and the fearless gaze of her girl¬ 
hood. She seemed more unmarried than any of her 
nieces. Archibald appeared happy enough in his mar¬ 
riage, and yet she knew so little about relationship. 
“You no longer wear knickerbockers?” she asked, having 
decided to probe a little into her life. 

“Not since my marriage.” 

“Archibald objected to them?” 

“No.” Elizabeth drawled the word to escape being 
abrupt. 

“Then, why?” 

“I am habitually lazy, I believe. Down in the country 
the easiest way was to wear them and so I wore them. 
Now, the easiest way is not to wear them, and so I don’t 
wear them.” 

Elizabeth spoke these words in a slow, patient way 
which was more irritating than she could know. 

Madame Slater began again. This time she spoke in 
her most gracious formal manner. “There is one incident 
I have always regretted, especially for your sake. That 
is the family misalliance. You could not fail to be deeply 
embarrassed by it. I appreciate your reticence on this 
subject.” 

To which of the tragical Slater alliances did her 
mother-in-law refer, Elizabeth wondered, as she turned 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


55 


over half a dozen that seemed bad to her. There was the 
one the eldest son, the deeply-revered, horrid head of the 
house, had made. Elizabeth longed to run away with his 
helpless, sweet wife, to hide her, maybe, in the groves of 
Idalia. Clearly it was not the oldest son, for he could do 
no wrong. What then? She sat still and waited. 

Madame Slater flushed slightly and continued, “ It was 
poor Emily’s fault in marrying Abraham Frost. She 
risked everything a woman values and lost. The girls 
are grotesque.” 

“Polly Woodis is clever,” Elizabeth said cautiously. 
“She has made Grey Whack, which I started as a charity, 
self-supporting.” 

“A true child of her father!” 

Elizabeth, who feared to disturb a not inharmonious 
silence, was aware some response was expected. “I like 
both the Frost girls,” she said honestly. “They are good 
and they spend their energy ungrudgingly for other 
people. Woodis is a cheerful, hard-working boy-” 

Elizabeth paused to look at the homely Georgian clock 
with its shining white face. In ten minutes luncheon 
would be announced. “I like the marriage,” she added. 

“Like it! Impossible! That is nonsense. Archibald 
tells me you have never been near Blowmedown since 
you were a girl.” 

Elizabeth winced; convicted of lying in Madame 
Slater’s eyes. No one, no one in the world, not even 
Arch knew how she loved Aunt Fan—how bitterly she 
missed her, how uprooting was the loss of her, how sting¬ 
ing the pain, now as then; now even more than then. 

“Does Archibald control his temper any better than in 



56 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


former times?” Madame Slater asked casually as she 
folded her knitting into a soft, white silk handkerchief. 

“More socks for her favorite grandchildren, mine never 
get any,” Elizabeth found herself thinking jealously. 
“Arch works intensely and incessantly,” she said aloud. 

“Like his grandfather; does he-?” 

“He is fine and splendid.” 

“Then he does , sometimes-” 

“Every emotion is cataclysmic with Arch, and I am— 
oh! no end exasperating and disconcerting.” 

“Afterwards, does he apologize?” 

“No, he seems to think he has a right. Do—do other 
men of his race believe they are justified in laying 
violent hands-?” 

“On their wives? Certainly not. But the Slater 
temper is, as you say of Arch’s, cyclonic. I think you 
are very sensible.” 

Elizabeth’s lips quivered. What that meant, Madame 
Slater was uncertain. 

Someone passed the door and went on down the spa¬ 
cious hall. Both women were disappointed; both had 
hoped for an interruption to their annual visit. 

Elizabeth fastened her eyes on the floor, lest they shoot 
too frequently toward the clock. Her mother-in-law sat 
opposite to her, a block of white marble, a flawless block. 
It could be depended upon neither to deviate nor to 
wobble. 

Then luncheon was announced and together they left 
the room, with the triumphant feeling that again they 
had had their yearly heart-to-heart visit, that again they 
had walked on thin ice and not broken through. 





FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


57 


Madame Slater left Elizabeth with a sense of having 
been discomfited, but also with a deepening feeling of 
sympathy, for there was a good deal in Elizabeth’s life 
that she knew to be difficult. She respected her reti¬ 
cence. After all Archibald’s wife had courage and 
loyalty. It would be egregious folly to demand too much 
of her undisciplined youth. And Elizabeth, who rarely 
left her mother-in-law’s presence without a sense of 
smouldering resentment, walked down the grand stairway 
in mutinous mood. After all it was better that Arch was 
cataclysmic. There were two kinds of choking, mental 
and physical. She would choose the physical. She did 
not know why she resented Archibald’s wrath so little. 
She hated the noise of it. When that was over, she went 
on the same as before. 

Madame Slater paused by the heavy newel-post sup¬ 
porting a bronze Mercury which in its turn supported a 
bronze torch, electrically equipped. 

“Have you written any more novels like ‘The Lily 
Pond’,” she demanded. 

“No.” 

“I hope you never will.” 

“As a matter of deep regret, I haven’t time.” 

“Thank Providence for that.” 

Elizabeth stared rather wildly about her and passed on 
into the dining room. 

At luncheon, that day, there was a gathering of fifteen 
Slaters. Three of their men were present, downright per¬ 
sonalities with inflexible mouths and positive ideas. 
Elizabeth liked them. They were well-bred, clean-cut 
and not ungenerous in their outlook upon life. The cold 


58 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


luncheon was served on a set of Queen’s china, but 
recently imported. The attention of the fifteen was cen¬ 
tered upon it, its form, its decoration, its probable age. 

Elizabeth longed to break away from the general con¬ 
versation and to ask Anthony, who sat at her right, if he 
had read “The Lily Pond,” and what he thought about 
it. She failed to see, even now, why the book shocked 
people. It had been written in the barn where the crash¬ 
ing rains and the shadows were conducive to moods. The 
book was not gay enough, not always even true. 

Finally the conversation sheered from Queen’s china to 
a vigorous protest which was being made by a certain 
club of women against the morals, manners and dress of 
the oncoming generation. 

“I can’t make out what good all this talk does,” 
Anthony said unexpectedly. “Here’s Elizabeth. Any 
dub can see she dresses just about right. You should take 
her along as model.” 

“Her gowns cost a fortune,” Julianna blurted. 

“Do they?” 

Elizabeth laughed. “They aren’t precisely cheap,” she 
admitted, “but they are no bother. Monsier Rachel runs 
my wardrobe.” 

“I may be old-fashioned, but I can’t get over the 
feeling that it is indecent to go to a man for fittings,” a 
thin voice quavered at the far end of the table. 

“Oh, Aunt Mary!” a chorus of Slaters jeered. 

“What I don’t like about Elizabeth’s frocks is that 
they are so frightfully ahead of the fashions. They 
never have that having-been-worn-look that makes them 
seem a part of you.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


59 


Elizabeth began to feel restive. Each winter she 
visited the Slaters, the misfit was driven into her flesh 
a little more deeply. Some day, it would hit a vital 

point and then- But Julianna was speaking to her 

again. 

“Funny! You have somewhere in your makeup a Pre- 
Revolutionary, Plymouth Rock stratum of Puritanism. 
It shows in lots of ways. You never wear your evening 
frocks really low, not even as low as mine. Now, why 
don’t you?” 

Elizabeth’s suppressed resentment suddenly flamed 
forth. “The reason why I don’t,” she said deliberately, 
“is because I have a mole on my stomach.” 

The entire clan put down its Sheffield forks, its old 
Sandwich-glass goblets, or whatever other implement of 
food-transference it happened to be holding and stared in 
horrified silence. Then they all began to talk and eat at 
once and the clatter was terrifying. Anthony turned 
crimson. Elizabeth felt that he was struggling not to 
burst, but whether with wrath or mirth, she dared not 
surmise. 

“For the life of me, I can’t understand what on earth 
made Julianna heckle you through the luncheon hour,” 
Anthony said to Elizabeth as they followed the pack into 
the second drawing room, where a cannel-coal fire was 
glowing in a vastly respected dog grate, mounted on legs 
and ornamented with polished brass urns. “You really 
don’t like us Slaters, now, do you?” 

“There is Arch and the children,” Elizabeth said 
lightly. “You must remember they are Slaters.” 

“Tell me,” the boy urged, stopping her effectually in 



60 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the marble hall. “You are awfully nice, though you 
aren’t our turbulent kind, and you are awfully unhappy 
in this house. The east wind is gentle compared to us 
Slaters. It is our accursed arrogance of race, an innate 
imbecility of character. Tell me,” he repeated, “is Arch 
like the rest of the hatch? Is he livingly decent? Do 
you care for him?” 

Elizabeth laughed straight into Anthony’s blue eyes, 
demanding the truth of her. “Arch is more to me than 
all the rest of the world put together,” she said, “and of 
course the children—there is no use saying anything 
about the children.” 

Anthony was a fair, thin Slater with a restive expres¬ 
sion not unlike Archibald’s and a talented mind. He had 
too inquiring a spirit ever to be satisfied with the pre¬ 
digested honors so copiously served to him in the Fen¬ 
way house. Congenitally, he was incapable of accepting 
facts at their face value. “All of us Slaters deserve a 
trouncing,” he said grimly. “Us jackalish men, I mean. 
The women, I’d leave to their Maker.” 

With these words, the boy stood aside while Elizabeth 
passed into the dull second drawing room. Then he 
turned and swiftly made for the street as if pursued by a 
thousand hungry devils. 


CHAPTER II 


The next day, Elizabeth saw ahead of her a few hours 
of silence. The children with nursemaids and governesses 
were conveniently packed away in the nursery play¬ 
house, a small building standing apart in a formal garden 
of rose trellises, pergolas and boxwood borders. The 
family had dashed off on a dozen different lines. How 
she had escaped dashing she scarcely understood. It was 
rather wonderful, the way her unruffled mother-in-law 
took the whole burden of the big house on her shoulders 
and carried it efficiently, everyone, even the least grand¬ 
child, being made happily comfortable. 

Feeling unprotected, as she always would, now that 
Aunt Fan had left her, Elizabeth wrapped herself in a 
soft grey cape. She pushed aside the curtain and, snap¬ 
ping up the shade of an eight-foot window, curled down 
on a Georgian window seat covered with horsehair and 
stared out into a bleak, frozen street. The wind flung 
itself recklessly against the plate-glass panes, but the 
splendidly built frames did not quiver. Their unrespon¬ 
siveness amused Elizabeth; their inflexibility was so 
characteristically tribal. 

There was a new cadence in the wind, a long sweeping 
rhythm with a short stop—some obstruction like suf¬ 
fering; a trifling leap of the heart, then silence, death 
perhaps. Elizabeth closed her eyes and prayed, “Oh 
God, take away this restlessness. Melt this lump in my 
61 


62 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


throat. Take away this terrible dread of the future.” 

“Goodness, Elizabeth, I have been pounding on your 
door for fifteen minutes. I concluded you had gone out 
with Mother to the something Colonial Preservation meet¬ 
ing.” Julianna stampeded into the room. “You can’t 
sit in a window like that, at least in Boston. Huh! I 
can’t reach the tassel to the shade. Never care. Come 
on into my room. I have a coal fire and a pot of choco¬ 
late. You didn’t eat any breakfast this morning. I 
decided to shy my skating lesson and have a visit with 
you. 

“People ought to be first-named after they are grown 
up,” Julianna said cosily as she poured a cup of choco¬ 
late for her sister-in-law. “My name would suit you to a 
nicety, you look so dark and mysterious like a Da Vinci 
drawing. Bessie would be about right for me. I shall 
give my children little names. I love the Roman idea, 
Cornelius Scipio Africanus Minor Numantius, Fabius 
Maximus Cunctator, Appius Claudius Caecus. They 
mean something real.” 

“And Cincinnatus, so very appropriate because of his 
kinky hair.” 

Julianna looked dubious. 

“It is rather a nuisance to be a distinguished family,” 
Julianna said after she had made way with two cups of 
chocolate which immediately upon swallowing she 
regretted, for she had already had one excellent breakfast 
and she was getting plumpish. “I won’t thrust that 
burden on my sons, at least, any more than I can help.” 

Julianna’s conversation, which was soothing because of 
its irrelevancy, finally ran down. Elizabeth only half 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


63 


listened as she leaned forward on her box stool and 
examined the quaint fire basket on the open hearth. 

“Do you mind my envying you?” she said, when the 
final stop came. “I do, damnably. The obligations that 
I deliberately assumed are so complicated and entangling 
that I shall never be free, unless I slip from under them 
and let the whole structure of my life go smash. And of 
course, if I did that, serenity of mind would be gone. It 
gives me a turned-inside-out feeling, whenever I think of 
the children and of all the things for which they will 
think they have a right to look to me. From the first 
instant a baby squirms it is a relentless tyrant. Death, 
alone, ends his uncanny power.” 

“I don’t understand how you can feel that way about 
babies,” Julianna now spoke incisively. “I am absolutely 
positive my children won’t bother me. I shall have six, 
anyway.” 

“But you are so competent. I can see you with a grad¬ 
uated row of tidy children with tidy minds and still tidier 
souls.” 

“Heavens! Elizabeth, don’t be so sarcastic. I can’t 
imagine why you and I aren’t friends. We may as well 
admit we aren’t. You can’t abide any of us except Arch. 
I have been talking it over with Mother. Families are 
different, she says. There is no escaping tradition. All 
the submerged instincts of our race act as a sort of break¬ 
water on our impulses and we are as we are made, not as 
we would choose to be. Do you believe that balderdash?” 

“Just about that.” 

“Well, I don’t. If I did, I’d feel like a rat in a trap, 
clamped and bleeding. There’s something in it as far as 


64 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


ability goes. If I married Teddy Wainwright, none of my 
children would probably play the piano. Music does 
seem to go in families. We Slaters are very artistic when 
it comes to color and form, but we aren’t musical. I 
imagine you play naturally.” 

“There were many lessons.” 

“It’s not the same thing at all,” Julianna insisted stub¬ 
bornly. “I thought after you had been in this house for a 
while you’d learn to appreciate its beauty; but you 
haven’t, and you can’t.” 

“I do like enormously many-” 

“You think it’s horrid,” Julianna interrupted. “Why 
can’t you for this once be frank with me?” 

“So many times frankness hurts.” Elizabeth wondered 
if she were developing into a conscientious prig. “I see 
no virtue in it. You may guess and guess what your 
friends feel and think, but if they have remained silent, 
there is always the comforting doubt. And besides, we 
don’t always feel and think the same.” 

“I do.” 

“ ‘Now who shall arbitrate. Ten man love what I hate 

. . .Ten who in ears and eyes-’ ” Elizabeth pulled 

her mind back to Judy’s hurt face. “This room makes me 
think of harps,” she said, as she looked about its Celtic 
fittings. “I like it tremendously, but of course you 
won’t believe I do. I have an ancient Irish harp, painted 
green and gilded. I once twanged its strings to the tune 
of Bynnery. Mr. Satterlee, Archibald Satterlee, gave it 
to me. He taught me Gaelic songs, many of which have 
never been put into print. Would you like the harp for 
this room?” 




FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


65 


“I’d hate it and despise it,” Julianna said fiercely. 

“Why?” 

“Why do you ask? All Boston knew about you and 
Mr. Satterlee.” 

“That sounds rather ominous. You mean our friend¬ 
ship before I was married?” 

“Archibald Satterlee was married. I scorn flirting 
with married men. How could you?” 

“If you reflect a little, you will see it is just as easy and 
about as natural to like a man who has a wife as one who 
hasn’t.” 

“That’s not how we Slaters look at life. Mother did 
everything in her power to steer Arch off. But, heavens! 
no one can stop Arch and you belong to a good family. 
What’s the use of being well-bred, if that is the way 
you are going to act? I naturally like you in spite of 
the—the—affair and though you are stand-offish and 
different.” 

“I don’t mean to be that.” 

“It’s awfully queer to see you struggle and struggle to 
be kind to us Slaters.” 

Elizabeth pushed her long slender feet firmly into the 
tips of her pink satin mules and gazed rebukingly at 
their delicate blue embroideries. Extravagant things, 
mules, she thought and a useless luxury. Arch disliked 
them. 

“Life is awfully queer,” she finally said aloud to 
Julianna. 

“I never could understand about you and Archibald 
Satterlee,” Julianna insisted. 

“It was a sort of glorified friendship,” Elizabeth said 


66 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


stiffly. “He was never dull or—or obvious. We cor¬ 
responded. I adored his letters.” 

“All Boston knew about those letters. We are just a 
big country family, old Back Bay Boston, I mean. Kate 
Satterlee is related to or connected with almost every¬ 
one. We may think we have secrets; we haven’t, of 
course, though there is a lot of whispering going on. Mr. 
Satterlee left your letters about and Kate, who is hor¬ 
ridly jealous, read them and told someone. You wrote 
such amusing things, scraps of them kept floating around. 
Much of what you said was just clever, but there were 
parts I don’t see how any girl could have written if she 
didn’t care a lot, and all the time you were engaged to my 
brother.” 

Elizabeth, who was smiling tranquilly into the fire as if 
she had happy memories, did not trouble to excuse her 
conduct. Her unruffled mood brought two red spots into 
Julianna’s cheeks. 

“What dangerous things they are—letters,” Elizabeth 
said. “You put down thoughts that perhaps never have 
occurred to you before, and never will again, but they 
are irrevocable! More tangible, by far, than the others 
which are much more a part of you.” 

“Irrevocable! So is life. Arch ought to have married 
Lucy Penrose. He began by loving her when he was in 
Harvard. At least, we thought he did. Lucy is a New 
Englander, more like us, and we have always known her 
family. But the instant Arch met you, he lost his head. 
I think he loves Lucy still, though Mother says not. 
Somehow, she has managed to keep her youth and her 
good looks; but so have you. I suppose it is possible for 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


67 


a man to love two women at the same time. I loathe the 
idea. I should be furious if I thought Tommy had ever 
loved any other girl, especially if he had loved her first. 
For first really means last. That is what Arch said the 
other day.” 

Julianna looked into Elizabeth’s face with sudden 
remorse. “It is beastly of me, beastly,” she said; “but 
your speaking of Archibald Satterlee, the way you did, 
as if you were still fond of him, made me do it. You see 
your affair began when I was a child and I adored Arch. 
It was then that I learned mothers and fathers do not 
always love each other. It was an awful shock. The 
entire Slater breed were dead set against you. They 
aren’t entirely over their prejudice, even now, after ten 
years, for you are difficult to know. Mother and I feel 
quite differently since you are the wife of Arch, though 
the telegrams Archibald Satterlee sent you on your wed¬ 
ding day, I will admit, are staggering. Evelyn Fordyce 
says there were three, written in cipher.” 

Julianna stopped short and looked at her sister-in-law, 
on the low stool opposite her. She seemed like a shadow 
in her soft grey garments, like a shadow but for her 
burning eyes. “Just the same, I could love you if you 
would let me,” she said affectionately. 

Elizabeth slipped her hand into Julianna’s. “I am 
sorry for Arch,” she said gravely. “Nature plays such 
vile tricks with men of his type. It makes them sacri¬ 
fice what they hold most dear for a passion. And that 
burned out, what do they have and hold? Rubbish.” 

“Aren’t you sorry for yourself?” 

“I suppose I am; but not often.” 


68 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“You never met Lucy Penrose, did you? She is tre¬ 
mendously nice and painfully clever. Shall I invite her 
in to luncheon?” 

“Some other time, perhaps. But my fortnight is nearly 
up and Arch is coming tomorrow.” 

“A triangle! Goodness! You are right. That would 
be theatrical.” 

To Julianna’s surprise, Elizabeth smiled at this, but she 
let the conversation drop. 

“I shall never be satisfied, Julianna,” Elizabeth said, 
“if you fail to teach me how to put coals in that queer 
little fire basket. Tell me if the maid does actually 
carry it about from room to room.” 

And so Julianna demonstrated the uses and conven¬ 
iences of the iron fire basket. When Elizabeth returned 
to her room, she watched her Sittings with only a slight 
misgiving. She hadn’t seemed to mind about Lucy. 
She couldn’t, of course, after her own flirtations with 
Archibald Satterlee. 

Julianna, unpleasantly baffled, lingered for an hour or 
more by the glowing coals and thought about her sister- 
in-law. “Elizabeth is tremendously attractive,” she con¬ 
ceded, “even fascinating, but she is not deep. If she had 
been deep, she would have been all broken up about Lucy 
Penrose. Well, she wasn’t, thank goodness!” 


CHAPTER III 


Saturday evening, Elizabeth frocked in blue to please 
Arch, who was coming up by the late afternoon express 
for her and the children. Her dress was very beautiful 
and quick to put on and comfortable, but Madame 
Slater said it was made for a child. Around her neck she 
dropped a platinum chain set with sapphires which the 
Slaters had pronounced badly flawed and so without 
value. But the stones laughed back at her and she 
loved their gaiety; their blue was unwavering like the 
sky, persistent like fate. They renewed her courage. 

Archibald had given the sapphires to Elizabeth the day 
of her wedding. She had opened the package they came 
in, late at night. Evelyn had dropped the box in her lap 
while she was waiting for two hideous, sleek men in 
glossy black to glide out of Aunt Fan’s room and to go 
away. Elizabeth frowned back into the throbbing past. 
In the enclosing box which held the morocco case, Archi¬ 
bald Satterlee had inscribed a few lines from one of the 
old Victorian poets. It was so like him to hark back to 
a dead past. The eight crisp lines she remembered quite 
distinctly; they had almost a modern swing to them. 

“You forsooth, a flower; 

Nay, my love a jewel: 

Jewel at no mercy 

Of a moment in your prime. 

Time may fray the flower, 

69 


70 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Kind be time or cruel: 

Jewel from each facet 
Flash your laugh at time.” 

What had Evelyn, who had carried to nice completion 
the wedding and then the funeral with their accompany¬ 
ing notes and lists and who had also kept tab on all her 
telegrams and letters, thought about the sapphires in her 
austere soul? She had told the Slaters this along with all 
the rest. That was only clan loyalty. That was why the 
stones were flawed! 

And that, too, had been the end of Archibald Satterlee. 
He was now living in London writing plays and, if what 
Julianna said of him were true, leading a reckless life. 
Kate, who had remained in Boston and who had divorced 
him on the ground of incompatibility, was ruining their 
two sons by overtraining. Elizabeth felt impelled to send 
her some psychoanalytic literature which she found a 
useful aid in the teaching and, maybe, the understanding 
of her own children. She would do th^t for a bygone 
memory. Elizabeth’s lips curled. Was she never to 
outgrow the missionary poison of her proselyting ances¬ 
tors? Again she looked critically at Monsieur Rachel’s 
frock that made her appear like a child and at the shin¬ 
ing necklace. Her reflection in the dark mysterious 
mirror, but dimly seen in the candlelight, thrilled her 
imagination. In her shadowed image she saw something 
stern, angry, terrifying, unbelievably different from the 
person she knew herself to be. 

Far below, the front door banged. “That,” she 
thought, “is Arch. No one else in the world could swing 
a door to with such a mighty noise, though the entire 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


71 


Slater clan are unusually expert in this ungentle art.” 

Then she heard his voice ring through the hall, “Where 
is Elizabeth?” 

Arch wouldn’t come up immediately. That was a 
habit of his, shouting aloud her name whenever he came 
home. Satisfied that she was in, as a wife should be, he 
went about his affairs and when at last they met on the 
stairway or at the dinner table, he spoke to her or not as 
his mood dictated. His Slater shortcomings, she assured 
herself, were of the small variety and so negligible. 
Nevertheless, she felt daily living would be less barren if 
he observed what Aunt Fan used to call “the happy 
amenities.” 

Tonight, Elizabeth knew Arch would make a bee line 
for the nursery. She did not hurry to meet him for he 
passionately loved his three boys and counted separation 
from them bitter loss. But ten minutes before the 
solemn seven o’clock dinner was announced, she went to 
the nursery hoping she might persuade him to put on his 
evening clothes. Very likely she would be unable to do 
so, and even more likely Madame Slater would hold her 
responsible for the omission. 

The nursery, which was the only wwGeorgian room 
in the house, was quite as praiseworthy as was every¬ 
thing else her remarkable mother-in-law devised. It 
was porcelain-lined, immaculately white, scientifically 
equipped. Six white enamelled beds with dimity cur¬ 
tains for cutting off dangerous drafts always stood ready 
for her grandchildren. On one side was a small white 
supper room and on the other a wonderful bath with a 
high porcelain table for the babies. The place was given 


72 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


over to what the little boys called, “eats and sleeps and 
scrubs,” all play hours being relegated to the house in 
the garden. 

“I can’t understand what induced Mother to build 
this inhuman hole,” Arch grumbled as Elizabeth entered 
the room. “I haven’t seen the boys for two weeks. 
There isn’t a chair to sit on.” 

“Too bad! Tomorrow—Arch! You haven’t dressed 
for dinner!” 

“I had my dinner coming up, so I could get in a visit 
with the boys tonight. I never expected to find them 
packed away in the ice chest at this infernal hour.” 

Elizabeth, who felt like putty displaced by marble, 
looked resentfully at her husband. In petulant mood, she 
crossed the room, tired of being forgotten, snubbed, 
ignored. Then she thought of the chilly, solemn, dun- 
colored, seven o’clock dinner and said, “Would you care 
to wrap the children up and take them down to my 
room? The four-poster bed will hold them all.” 

“Corking!” 

“Be careful about drafts. If they should get the 
influenza!” 

“Hang the influenza!” Arch interrupted. 

“You forget I shall have to deal with your mother,” 
Elizabeth said as she put woolen night-socks on her little 
daughter’s feet. 

Arch took the boys, one pickaback and one on each 
arm, “starboard, larboard,” the boys called it, and with 
noisy howls and shrieks trekked down to Elizabeth’s 
room. 

Elizabeth shook her garments straight and passed hur- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


73 


riedly on down to dinner. She made profuse explanations 
for her husband’s absence which Julianna insisted were 
very, very queer, to say the least. Madame Slater 
remarked that it was excessively annoying of people to 
change their hours of travel. Archibald was not to arrive 
until midnight. That was the time he was expected and 
that was the time he should have come. The household 
had been arranged accordingly, down to his favorite sup¬ 
per of cold roast-beef sandwiches, rice pudding and hot 
coffee. Thomas had his orders to meet him at the station 
with the limousine. She utterly failed to comprehend his 
gyrations. Elizabeth must be culpably lax in managing 
her schedules. 

And then to the outrage of the clan, Anthony, carrying 
with him his plate of half-eaten crab meat, sat down in 
his brother’s empty place. At the Slater domestic board, 
husband and wife were invariably placed side by side to 
make impossible, Elizabeth imagined, any variance to the 
monotony of eating in perpetuo with one person. 

Slowly, there had grown up between Anthony and 
Elizabeth a happy friendship. Though of clannish 
tenacities, Anthony had developed a distinguishing indi¬ 
viduality of his own. He had chosen to study architec¬ 
ture and having completed his technical training at the 
schools, he was now about to enter the London office of 
Beardsley, Page & Clewett. The whole Slater clan 
loved and disapproved of Anthony because he was unlike 
the rest of them. They felt his kindness to the married- 
ins to be a part of general looseness, a type of clan 
disloyalty. 

After dinner and after coffee in the First Drawing 


74 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Room, where the family sat proud and uncomfortable, 
and after Elizabeth had played on a revered spinet-piano, 
that tinkled merrily to her touch, the family gathering 
disintegrated. Elizabeth hurried to the rescue of Anne 
Preston who prided herself on the fact that when she dis¬ 
approved of people, they always knew it. She wholly 
disapproved of Mr. Slater’s bedtime stories. 

Halfway down the hall, Elizabeth found Anne, stand¬ 
ing straight and firm like a telephone pole, denuded of 
its rightful beauty. Livid with rage, she remained still 
faithful to her duty as guardian of the young. Her fea¬ 
tures were sharp enough to chop wood with; her eyes 
were fires to light the wood after it was chopped. “Why 
don’t you sit down somewhere?” Elizabeth said as she 
passed swiftly on into her own room. 

The three boys were bolstered up against the head- 
board of the four-poster, listening intently to a story their 
father was telling them of a steeplejack. Elizabeth won¬ 
dered if any other three little boys looked as much alike 
as hers. They had fair skins, blue eyes, a trifle too pale, 
light hair, straight handsome noses, well-cut chins, and 
beautiful backs. They were firmly made, handsome 
children, cold yet tempestuous. Sometimes she feared 
they might grow to be cruel, hard men. They seemed to 
her more like their grandmother than their father. She 
never had been able to understand them. Intellectually 
they were keen, with tenacious memories and an appar¬ 
ently unbounded power for assimilating facts. 

Elizabeth’s family, certainly, did not develop according 
to her psychological concepts, for the boys loved their 
father best and Lize clung to her. Little Lize was now 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


75 


asleep in her father’s arms. It was good of Arch to hold 
her, for she knew he found it difficult not to be annoyed 
by her presence; difficult, possibly, not to dislike her. 
Lize was very much like herself, dark and thin and Celtic. 
Elizabeth felt a stab of pain when she saw Arch’s indif¬ 
ference toward his little daughter, for she thought if he 
had ever cared for her, he would now care for Lize. It 
summed up a terrifying waste of love, of energy—their 
marriage that began so tragically and petered so swiftly 
into nothing. 

Gently, Elizabeth took Lize from Arch’s arms. “I will 
give her to Anne, now,” she said. “Anne is waiting out 
in the hall.” 

There was an outcry of protest from the boys. The 
Georgian clock donged pompously nine times. 

“I have another story. Let me keep them,” Arch 
demanded. 

“All right,” Elizabeth acquiesced as she shook her 
daughter awake and so onto her feet. “I will go up to 
the nursery to sleep with Lize and you can keep the boys. 
But tomorrow morning, I shall let you explain your 
strange, illegal acts to your mother.” 

Arch smiled somewhat grimly. “You had your share 
of that tonight,” he said. 

“One of the maids has saved a pot of baked beans and 
a bowl of rice pudding for you. Don’t forget to eat them, 
or you will be a bear by tomorrow morning.” 

Arch looked quickly at his wife as she passed out of 
the room. She was paler than usual and thinner. “It is 
this damned east wind,” he thought, “and the accursed 
Slater arrogance and stagnation. It is a rotten deal we 


76 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


are giving her. She needs more country; so do the boys. 
The first of May I’ll send them all off to the White 
Mountains.” 


CHAPTER IV 


A deep, narrow path had been shovelled through the 
snow up to the broad green door of Blowmedown. Pale 
blue smoke was rising from the chimneys and drifting 
slowly down past the old barns to the frozen valley and 
the silver birches on the lower levels. 

Polly Woodis had opened the house, Elizabeth imag¬ 
ined. Very likely Arch had telegraphed she was coming. 
The house door swung open silently. Loong Li stood 
waiting. The blazing logs in the fireplace, a delicate 
aroma of tea, a dear familiarity of place, sent Eliza¬ 
beth’s blood beating high. Two chairs were drawn close 
to the black table. Aunt Fan’s stately Jacobean and her 
own straight-backed Sheraton. 

Elizabeth flung her arms wide for one blinding instant, 
then dropped dizzily onto her own small chair, more her 
own it seemed to her than any other chair in the world. 
It had been some one else’s before she was born. It 
would be some one else’s after she was gone—little Lize’s 
perhaps, and Lize’s daughter’s possibly. She drank her 
tea, scalding hot and clearest amber. Then she told 
Loong about her four children. 

After Loong had carried away the scarlet lacquer tray 
with its pretty Dureta china, Elizabeth decided that she 
would go up to the real house, where she and Aunt Fan 
had lived so many contented years, and where life had 
been a procession of beautiful days. But first, she 
crossed her hands on the cool, shining table and rested 
her head on them to think, she believed; to weep, in 
77 


78 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


reality. She wept slowly for a long time but with repres¬ 
sion. Somewhere—some other time, she would not weep 
so quietly. 

After an hour had passed, Loong, now old and withered 
and yellowed, glided into the room and laid fresh pine- 
knots on the fire. It was as if he were performing some 
sacred ceremony; but Elizabeth was unaware of his 
movements. 

Life had grown to be all prose. 

“Oh, Aunt Fan, sometimes I dread the future,” she 
said, staring hopelessly into the empty chair on the other 
side of the table. “I am so tired of being a careful 
mother and a docile wife, of knowing, ninety days ahead, 
just where I shall be and what I shall be doing. Some¬ 
times, I lie awake at night planning dramatic bursts for 
freedom. Just suppose I chucked the little boys for a 
year in a safe hole and ran away! Think of all the 
delirious places I could go to. Supposing I went to 
Tahiti and opened a great gaudy hotel, somewhere near 
the water, looking out over the harbor, a new ‘Cirque 
Bougainville.’ I could serve the drinks myself and all 
the ebb and flow of the Seven Seas would pass through 
them. One could have utter liberty without love (love is 
never liberty) and lay in enough warmth and color, 
enough excitement and experience, to last for ten more 
grey dutiful years. The little boys would be all right 
and Arch would be happy having his way with them. 
But I suppose the Slater clan—that’s the rub; the Slater 
clan would be infuriated by the disgrace I had brought 
upon them. I could never explain to them. How could 
they understand?” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


79 


But the Jacobean chair with its blue cushioned seat 
stood empty. 

When Aunt Fan had left her, it had seemed to 
Elizabeth that two great gates that let in the light had 
clanged shut, and now the world was grey and hard. She 
had not known she had no torch till Aunt Fan had gone. 
Aunt Fan’s had been so brilliant, it had encompassed her 
with its radiance. What would Aunt Fan have her do 
now? If she should come into the room as was her 
custom and take the seat with the blue cushion, what 
would she tell her to do? What would Aunt Fan herself 
have done if she had been married to Arch, Arch who was 
splendid, a mixture of cruel and noble instincts, the noble 
overtopping the brutal; a man who was habitually cold, 
but at unequal spaces, volcanic; one who could choke and 
justify the choking; a man to be respected for his virility, 
admired for his almost boundless ability, and loved for 
his goodness of heart, yet so bleak, so cruelly bleak to 
live with, day by day. She pitied him for his harshness. 
Very likely, he would be glad to be different. When he 
spoke of the catastrophe at the Dardanelles his voice 
trembled and if he heard of any great injustice or use¬ 
less suffering he stumbled about the house in rage. Then 
she called aloud, “Aunt Fan, Aunt Fan, come back to 
me. Put your arms about me for one instant of time. For 
one instant of time, put your arms about me and hold 
me. I need your tenderness. Oh! I need it: I need it.” 

Only the wind tearing around the house and the rest¬ 
less beating of the shutters in their iron clamps answered 
her. 

“Aunt Fan!” 


80 FETTERS OF FREEDOM 

Loong Li opened the door and let in an old, emaciated 
collie dog. 

“Sanny!” 

Elizabeth sprang to her feet and the shaggy creature 
flung herself passionately against her. “You dear thing!” 
she said, “you dear, dear thing! Sanny, Sanny, you have 
the tender heart. What! More pets? That is what you 
want?” 

“San is a dead dog,” Loong Li said sorrowfully. “He 
very good, but not good like Sanny. You have your 
luncheon on black table, like you use?” 

“Please,” Elizabeth acquiesced as she buried her hands 
in the deep ruff about Sanny’s neck, all yellow and brown 
and golden and white and curling every which way. 
From the hearthstone, she watched Loong Li leave the 
room as unobtrustive as a tiny blade of grass and as still 
as the voiceless house in which she sat. 

For ten years, Loong Li had cooked for Polly Woodis, 
but he had lived at Blowmedown and kept the place 
immaculate for her. Or was it for Aunt Fan that he had 
rendered this service? By some strange process of 
transference, the old man had come to worship Madame 
Duncan, as any Chinaman worships his ancestors. Aunt 
Fan was his ancestress by adoption. One cold January 
morning, in the bitter past, Elizabeth had buried Aunt 
Fan’s ashes under a pine tree on the Pinnacle and there, 
some time later, Loong had placed a porcelain lantern in 
which he burned incense and before which he worshipped. 
Nearby, he put a low black stool, and between the house 
and the tree, he wore a path. Polly had written Eliza¬ 
beth that some of the country people had begun to be 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


81 


afraid of the high hill and to say that Blowmedown was 
haunted. 

With one arm around the old collie who kept nuzzling 
her for more caresses, Elizabeth watched the blazing 
hickory logs which wasted their fibre somewhat reluc¬ 
tantly. It seemed to her that she never could climb the 
stone stairway again and pass through the closed doors 
that led back ten years into the past. It was now almost 
noon. In half an hour Loong would bring her some¬ 
thing to eat. She would have to take the four-thirty back 
to town, but the time in between was her own. Polly had 
been very nice about meeting her at the station, bring¬ 
ing her to the house, and then leaving her alone. She was 
like a low-roofed brown house Elizabeth knew at a road 
crossing, with shining lights in the windows for the night 
traveller, always there, but never obtrusive. She had 
then, four hours in which to do things; to think if she 
could, to cry if she must. She pulled toward her a smart 
moire purse hanging on a silk cord. She opened it half 
reluctantly in search of a memorandum written down in 
Arch’s incisive hand, lest she forget the reasons of her 
journey—or the excuse. 

Sanny moved softly and put up a slender white paw to 
keep her attention. “You missed me, then,” Elizabeth 
said, looking into her golden brown eyes with their dark 
blue pupils. “Cities are no place for collie dogs. Arch 
said it, Sanny, and Arch knows. You’d have hated it, old 
thing.” 

Sanny pushed her head a little more closely against 
Elizabeth’s knee and went to sleep. 

“Sanny, Sanny, how very little it t^kes to make you 


82 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


happy.” Elizabeth stroked her head in the way she 
liked best, with softly inquiring fingers playing about her 
ears and beneath her throat. 

And the old banjo clock, so out of place at Blowme- 
down, Julianna had once told her, ticked gravely ahead, 
when it did not pause to wheeze forth the hours and the 
halves. It had ticked away, all these ten years, counting 
out for her, her days. She still retained the early impres¬ 
sion that it was the arbitor of her fate, that it ticked 
solely for her, Elizabeth Duncan—Slater. It had kept on 
doing it and so life had slipped, this strange, beautiful, 
glorious life that no one can live but once. 

In eighty seconds, the clock would strike twelve. 
Would it strike twelve? Elizabeth waited, terrified, while 
it slowly mustered its forces. It seemed to her that she 
would go mad if it struck twelve, but if it didn’t- 

“Loong Li, Loong Li,” she shrieked. “Look! Sanny! 
—dead!” 

When Elizabeth again turned her eyes toward the old 
banjo clock, it was long past noon. “I will have no 
luncheon, after all,” she said in a thin voice. “I have 
many things to do, before I return to town. I take the 
four o’clock. Don’t let me forget.” 

And Elizabeth passed steadily up the stone stairway 
and into the real house. 

Pale sunshine flooded the long room. The same quiet 
light shone down in the valley below, and flickered softly 
over the clumps of evergreens and silver birches, which 
marked the way of the road between Blowmedown and 
the toy station. The day was without warmth or 
emphasis. Elizabeth passed from window to window, 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


83 


looking down first at the old grey barn and then at the 
tiny white church where St. John St. John still officiated 
at morning and evening prayers, conscientiously read¬ 
ing the entire service through aloud, even when no one 
was present to read the responses, Polly Woodis said. 
But Polly Woodis was usually there, for many of the 
inmates of Grey Whack found solace in the little white 
church in the valley. 

The long room was unchanged. On Aunt Fan’s tip- 
table stood a Ming vase holding a bunch of violets, and 
a tiny workbasket. And in the basket there still lay the 
Corona message from Archibald Satterlee, the last mes¬ 
sage he had ever sent her, and still unread. In impa¬ 
tient mood, Elizabeth spread the absurdity out on her 
lap and deciphered: 

“8, I—2@85, wait—58||, till—697, you—28||, will— 
$85, sit—285*, with—;3, me—8:, in—5*3, the—43@5, 
great—28 %3, wide—$0@?3$, spaces—285*, with— 
%@8$83$, daisies—@:%, and—"75534?70$, butter¬ 
cups—@5, at—974, our—!335, feet. I wait till you will 
sit with me in the great wide spaces with daisies and 
buttercups at our feet. 58||, Till—5*3:, then— 
!@4323||, farewell. Till then, farewell.” 

Elizabeth smiled over her own forgotten speech and 
Satterlee’s tenacity. He would wait on velvet cushions, 
she now saw; but what virtue was there in horsehair? 
Then she speculated as to how many more bobbins he 
had added to his marvelous weavings. Angrily, she 
threw the paper into the fire, gave another shuddering 
glance around the room and went on down the hall to her 
own chamber and so irrevocably into the past. 


84 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


In one corner stood the green chest which had been 
brought up from the granary, padlocked, of course, and 
the key left in New York. It was forgetting foolish 
little things like keys that constantly aroused her hus¬ 
band’s insensate anger. Loong Li, being summoned, 
raised the lid with chisel and hammer, without fuss and 
with very little noise. Actually the steps of living were 
simpler than Arch chose to admit. If he had opened 
the chest—Elizabeth shuddered away from memories of 
ripped-off covers, splintered doors, broken chisels and 
smashed fingers. Temper, of course. The three little 
boys had the same irascible spirit. How dared she hope 
to do any better by them than Madame Slater had done 
by Arch? 

In addition to her writing kit, the box contained let¬ 
ters from Archibald Satterlee, her unfinished story and 
some English magazines. The letters were on top, tied 
together in neat packages with purple ribbon. Alto¬ 
gether they were somewhat heavier than a Webster’s 
Unabridged, and considerably more bulky. But the 
letters were no longer precious to her. So she carried 
them down to the kitchen range and put them into the 
fire and listened to the crackle of them and the swift, 
flighty breathing of the chimney as it sucked the essence 
of them up its excellent flue. In heroic mood, she bore 
the heat of them and the flying, soft fragments from 
them, whenever she opened the lid to stuff in more, till 
they were quite gone. It was a waste to burn letters like 
these, a waste of something that makes life very beauti¬ 
ful, unless twisted and distorted into ugliness by people 
who say their prayers by the social system. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


85 


As Elizabeth went lingeringly back to her own room, 
through Aunt Fan’s comfortable home with its ampl£ 
window spaces and dignified furnishings, every part of 
which had its use and so its meaning, she wondered again, 
uncomprehendingly, why her mother-in-law had built 
for herself a late-Georgian mansion and filled it with 
late-Georgian furniture. If, somewhere, she found cour¬ 
age to live dutifully her middle years, she would make 
of Blowmedown a home for Arch and the children— 
a summer home now, an all-year-round home for Arch, 
when the children were in boarding-school. Obviously, 
it was the right place for the boys who were born to 
suffer from repressions. On the Pinnacle, they might 
venture to give their primordial instincts free play. They 
could own ponies and dogs and a hive of honey-bees and 
a litter of pigs, maybe, and a donkey. But they were to 
go to boarding-school, when they were quite young. Arch 
had already entered them. He had entered them with¬ 
out consulting her and then had been surprised and 
annoyed when he discovered she was not pleased. 

“But all the Slaters for three generations always have 
gone to Hillbury,” he explained impatiently. “You have 
to enter them the day they are born. They will grow up 
with the boys they naturally want to know as men. 
There isn’t any other school in New England its equal. 
When the catalogue came with entrance slips, I naturally 
filled them out. Mother entered Lize at Three Bridges, 
her first birthday. All the alumnae of Three Bridges do 
that. Of course, if you don’t want Lize to go there, you 
can withdraw her. She is yours.” 

In the green chest, Elizabeth found the novel she had 


86 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


been working so earnestly over at the time she was mar¬ 
ried. She remembered typing until the nerves in her 
brain clip-clopped out of unison. But still she had failed 
to finish it. With the loss of Aunt Fan, the will to con¬ 
tinue this work had been snuffed out. She now looked 
through the manuscript with lively interest. The story 
had no glamour. It was too much like a Freudian theory. 
It was too cocksure, too angry. People can’t be pinned 
down. The more you pin, the more they aren’t there. 
Her characters were interesting, though not actual human 
beings. They had been too plastic in her hands, too 
easily explained. Human beings had more tenderness, 
more imagination, more chances than she had believed. 
Psychoanalysts overstepped themselves. They had an 
odd weapon, a weapon that was both dangerous and 
absurd. No weapon, however keen, made up the armor 
of a crusading knight. 

As Elizabeth thought about her unfinished book, she 
walked blindly around her room, stumbling over things 
that blocked her way, hitting up against a chair or a wall, 
and the more she thought, the more she wanted to write 
the story over again. 

The green chest now stood empty except for a year’s 
subscription to an English weekly which Arch had sent 
her when they were first engaged. It was one of the few 
presents he had given her and though it was a paper of 
anathema, a young fierce thing girded to fight the 
world, Elizabeth felt for it a tender affection. She put 
the fifty-two copies back in the chest along with her 
rusted-out typewriter and left them to whatever fate 
might overtake them. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


87 


“Loong Li,” Elizabeth said as the various clocks almost 
simultaneously struck the half-past warning, “I am tak¬ 
ing Aunt Fan’s violets with me. Pick her some more. 
They are blossoming in the cold-frames just as they blos¬ 
somed ten years ago?” 

“Madame Duncan like violets, velly much,” Loong Li 
grinned. 

Then Elizabeth put on her soft grey coat and went 
down the narrow path between oozing snow-banks to 
the road which dropped precipitously down to the toy 
station and the polished rails that led her back to the 
iron city, to Arch, to Lize, and to the three boys with 
their too-pale blue eyes. 

Elizabeth had lost the four o’clock train. She would 
be half an hour late and Arch would be frantic. 

“Poor Arch!” 


CHAPTER V 


Despite Arch’s tempestuous excitement over her lost 
train, Elizabeth felt that her journey to Blowmedown 
had been a happy venture, the lifting of a shadow that 
darkened life. Dressing for dinner, she caught herself 
whistling a wild Hungarian tune quite gaily, while she 
made new plans for the boys. The houses in which the 
bees were to live should be apple-green, and across the 
front of each hive, the children could stencil a name— 
Wing and Wing; High- 

“It would be no more trouble and considerably less 
annoying if people left my books and papers where I put 
them.” Arch’s voice rang out angrily through the house. 

“Can’t you find them? That’s funny.” 

“It’s damnable.” 

Elizabeth ran down the hall to Arch’s study. From 
the sound one might think he was tearing up the floor. 
The door was closed. She hesitated for a second, then 
pushed her way in. 

“What papers have you lost?” 

“What I was reading you last night on ‘The Futility 
of Education.’ ” 

With his right arm, Arch swept his books and papers 
off the table onto the floor. “This room might be a 
public street,” he said, examining the contents of a chair. 
“I have no privacy. There is not a spot in the world I 
can call my own. When I am buried you’ll be using my 
88 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


89 


coffin for extra room! You have been using my ink, my 
pens, my blotting paper!” 

“Here is your manuscript,” Elizabeth said, bringing a 
broad manilla envelope out of one of the desk drawers, 
where she had put it, the wrong drawer, she now realized. 
“It was careless of me! I am sorry,” she said in a voice 
that sounded maddeningly patient. 

“You don’t care a damn!” 

Elizabeth stooped to pick up a bronze lotus flower 
which was slowly oozing ink. She held it in her right 
hand and was still stooping when Arch brought his fist 
down on her shoulder and, angered by her pliancy, shook 
her. A half smile passed over Elizabeth’s face. “Hell! 
You don’t care a damn!” he said bitterly as he pushed 
her out of the room and slammed the door. 

The exact way it happened remained vividly in Eliza¬ 
beth’s mind; the pain in her shoulder would not let her 
easily forget. “Why,” she asked herself wearily, “does 
it hurt so much worse today than other days?” The 
shoulder was already crimson. By tomorrow it would be 
purple and orange. Languidly, she searched through the 
emergency chest for an embrocation useful in cases of 
bruises. She kept a jar of it on hand for the little boys. 
As she applied the ointment the air was fragrant with the 
delicate aroma of balsam and this she found comforting. 

Once dressed and downstairs, she wandered restlessly 
about the house. Everything was, as nearly as she knew, 
the way Arch liked it. They were alone. He liked that, 
too. He liked eating a meal through in silence, with a 
book, usually a classic, in his left hand, while he tooled 
rapidly with his right. “Life is too short to waste an 


90 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


hour eating food,” he told her, when they were first mar¬ 
ried. “Some day we shall die and that will be an end,” 
he added sombrely. Always he shunned surface conver¬ 
sations, entertainments, popular lectures, jingoisms, 
though he was punctilious in his attendance of family 
functions, weddings, funerals, christenings, and anniver¬ 
saries of importance. 

At dinner, Elizabeth usually carved while he read and 
when the sweets came, he rewarded her by reading 
aloud some passage in which he was interested. At such 
times, there came a noble expression of face and eye 
that helped her to forgive his churlish manners and to 
forget her just wrath. Such an evening was before her 
now, she imagined. She wished her right shoulder didn’t 
pain her. She would be glad to forget what happened. 
Only a few hours before she had resolved not to let such 
small things disturb her—make tragedies out of them. It 
was so easy to get into the habit of doing that; to be 
fretted by Arch’s arrogance, his wraths, his uncontrolled 
tempers. And yet his soul was not brutal. 

With a swift two-steps-at-a-time bound, Arch came 
downstairs and joined Elizabeth. “I am sorry to be 
late,” he said concisely, as his hands roved fondly over 
a row of newly acquired Greek plays. 

Then Andrew, the old butler, who had a head shaped 
like an eggplant, announced dinner and they went out 
together. Arch immediately opened Herakles which he 
had brought with him and Elizabeth ladled out a dish of 
bean soup made thick and dark after an approved Slater 
recipe. In two minutes, Elizabeth knew by the sound of 
a decisively dropped spoon that Arch was done with his 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


91 


porridge. Again, Andrew approached, this time with a 
roast, which, after a slight hesitation, he placed before 
Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who found the carving of rare 
meats vexatious, cut off a big brown slice of beef which 
curled lazily down onto the platter and revealed a steam¬ 
ing red horror within. Having carved for him a huge 
broad hunk of this, she let her hands drop into her lap 
and waited. Slipping back into the imposing master 
chair in which she sat, she crossed her legs and so rested 
her painful right arm on her knee. 

And as Elizabeth sat there in the quiet room with its 
beautiful grey spaces and low flickering lights, a host 
of fantastic ideas assailed her brain. What a pity, she 
thought, that there are no buyers of souls such as hers, 
plain drab souls, the light extinct. Any soul was good 
enough for Mephistopheles. Too bad he is reasoned off 
the earth! This razzle-dazzling world needs him. 

There was a salad after beef which she also served and 
then dessert. But she found it impossible to eat. She 
fought hard against an overpowering faintness and com¬ 
promised with her conscience by drinking black coffee. 
Arch, who was still offended about his mislaid man¬ 
uscript, did not unbend as was his habit toward the end 
of dinner. Funny he should be offended! 

Dinner finally over, Arch and Elizabeth crossed back 
into the library, a place they both loved, and toward 
which they inevitably drifted. “You will excuse me,” 
Arch said. “I have promised the boys a story.” 

Elizabeth nodded slightly, as she dropped onto the 
settle facing the fire and picked up a book that happened 
to be there. Occasionally she could hear the shouts of 


92 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the little boys, for Arch told good stories; delicious, 
original stories with a snap to them that filled the souls 
of the downright three with joy. Lize made her own. 
She had already begun to entertain her brothers when 
they were alone. After a while, Elizabeth heard Arch 
close the nursery door, a little more gently than he did 
most things, and then tiptoe downstairs, as if the poor 
dears were already asleep. 

He paused by the open door, looking hungrily towards 
his wife and the blazing logs. 

“I have a lot of copying on hand,” Arch said. “I can’t 
get to bed before two, so I’ll say goodnight now. Oh, I 
brought home poor Winton’s new story. We would be 
glad to push him, but he’s drunk half the time. It will 
eventually smear his mind. Anyhow, read the manuscript 
and write out a summary of its contents and your 
opinion of its worth. Do it tonight, please. While your 
point of view is likely to be whimsical, it is the best we 
are able to get on that type of book,” he added with 
gracious intent. “As usual, Winton is late for the spring 
output. He will send his book to Franks, if we fail to 
bite at his first casting.” 

Elizabeth opened a drawer of the library table and 
pulled out from the one and only spot where Arch ever 
placed it, his flat leather case which was eternally bulging 
with unread manuscripts. She had only begun to read 
when Arch appeared at the door, to see if she were 
doing what he told her to do, she thought cynically. 

“I neglected to ask you if you spoke to the selectman 
about your iniquitous tax bill.” 

“I did, the first thing, even before I went to Blowme- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


93 


down. And your surmises came near the truth,” Eliza¬ 
beth admitted unwillingly. “I am paying precisely four- 
tenths of the town tax, beside repairing the road between 
our hill and the station. It looks very much like a 
gouge.” 

“It is an outrage.” 

“The tax after all is not terrifying.” 

“Can’t you see it is the injustice that is the outrage? 
I wish you would sell Blowmedown.” 

“Why, Arch? It is a glorious place to live. I want the 
children to spend their summers there.” 

“It is a rotten place. They never shall. At best it is 
difficult to bring them up to be honest. The morals of 
that town would contaminate the Angel Gabriel, and,” 
Arch’s voice trembled, “the boys are not born as honest 
as they should be. I don’t understand. You are straight 
as a die and I always supposed I was.” 

“Don’t exaggerate their prevarications into crime.” 

“I will train honesty into them,” Arch interrupted 
fiercely. “I want you to leave that part of their train¬ 
ing to me.” 

“All right. But please, please, Arch, don’t shut your 
mind against Blowmedown. The town is no worse than 
the rest of the world.” 

“I know of only one other as dishonest; that is Raven- 
hoe, where Aunt Trudo lived. First they damaged her 
home by making a truckway of her street and then they 
charged her eleven hundred and fifty-seven dollars and 
fifty-five cents for the damage they had done. She sold 
her home for two-thirds its assessed value and returned 
to Boston, where she belonged. The most devilish feature 


94 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


of humbuggery is the history it makes for the oncoming 
generations who are not naturally scrupulous.” 

“Don’t be so hard on the hill-people. They are easy 
going without business training, sometimes, I think, the 
only sesame to apparent honesty, and they are disen- 
chantingly poor. They think Aunt Fan’s money might 
help them out; and, really, why shouldn’t it?” 

Arch gave a scornful grunt, turned on his heel and left 
Elizabeth to her manuscript of two hundred thousand 
words. Winton invariably wrote long. After four hours 
of concentrated reading, she typed a concise summary of 
the story and put this along with the manuscript back in 
Arch’s bag and so in the library drawer in the exact spot 
where she had found it. 

It was past midnight. Arch was still working. He 
was driving his machine at tremendous speed. She could 
hear it the distance of two stairways and the long hall 
from the library. Clickety click click, clickety click click, 
click, click. Funny! How different it sounded from 
her own plodding, clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clip-clop. How 
mild she was! How mild any woman was compared with 
Arch! How difficult, how utterly impossible it was to 
understand him! She was not heroic enough or noble 
enough. That was the trouble. She was not noble 
enough for Arch. She could see in her marriage only 
a great and terrifying waste. She was not born to live on 
Olympic heights. Her soul yearned for the common¬ 
place. If Arch knew how docile she could be if he were 
sometimes just a little tender or sympathetic, or merely 
kind. Odd, her fate should be an armful of barbaric boys 
who might easily be of alien blood, and a husband whom 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


95 


she hurt most just when she tried hardest to please him. 

In the hall, Elizabeth paused to push a row of tiny 
pearl buttons which meant the flooding of the first floor 
with a mysterious darkness. Halfway up the long flight 
of stairs she paused, overcome by a recession of her life 
forces and a fast beating pulse. If only the forces 
would recede a little further. She was glad she did not 
believe in rewards and punishments—but only a stillness, 
everlasting, uninterrupted- The next second, Eliza¬ 

beth jerked herself together and mocking her own ailing, 
self-commiserating, timid soul, went swiftly to her own 
room. On her night-table, she found a wee bunch of 
violets put there by Lize and a neat pile of daily lessons. 
The boys had gold stars in their arithmetic, adds and 
take-aways, which meant they had made no mistakes in 
counting. 



CHAPTER VI 


The next day began with a promise of spring. 
The sky was a hilarious blue and there was caressing 
warmth in the air. Elizabeth, who woke with a chill in 
her heart, looked at the weather contrariwise. But with 
the steadying routine of her daily duties, she found her 
rebellious spirit quiescent. In the crescendo of Anne’s 
battle to send forty black fingernails to school clean, she 
could hear Madame Duncan’s gentle voice saying, “Who 
are you that you should demand happiness? The com¬ 
mon lot is pain and disappointment.” 

“But you?” 

“Cheerful, perhaps.” 

Like any good mid-Vic, Aunt Fan had found her hap¬ 
piness in virtue and resignation, when the world was 
replete with enchantments. Life could be very beautiful. 
Elizabeth was still convinced of this. She could hear 
faintly the music of it as it passed, while she plodded 
around and around in a black, sodden cellar of her own 
fashioning. 

The trivial things of the day attended to, Elizabeth 
went out into the sunny world to snaffle, if she could, 
courage. She had easily found it on the hills. It was 
certainly waiting for her in the stone city. Hyslop Gal¬ 
leries advertised an exhibition of paintings by a Nor¬ 
wegian artist whom she had found interesting to know. 
Today, his work seemed complacent, even worldly— 
96 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


97 


twenty cents a brush stroke. She turned hastily away 
from the gallery. 

The sun shone down hot, as she hurried past a flower 
shop filled with yellow primroses and pansies with a 
background of lilacs. “You aren’t really city-bred any 
more than I am,” she thought as she slipped a policeman 
and darted across a side street. Soon, she found herself 
at the door of her old publisher, Frederick Franks. She 
hadn’t been in his shop or seen Mr. Franks for nine 
years. Archibald hated him. “Clever man,” he con¬ 
ceded, “gets all the best foreign books, and even half the 
English and the colonials. But he is the devil incarnate 
when he deals with a man who is down.” 

Elizabeth climbed a short brown stone stairway and 
entered a charming room, furnished with plenty of chairs, 
reading tables and low lights. Here Franks displayed his 
publications and managed a small retail trade. On a 
shelf against the wall was a row of books in flam¬ 
boyant housings, and above, a poster which read: “The 
Ten Best Books of Fiction published within the Ten Last 
Years: The Ten Best Sellers: The Ten for Ten Dollars.” 

Elizabeth gave her card to a charming young girl who 
was the only person beside herself in the room, and 
while she waited for Franks, she examined the row 
of books. Six of them were translations, primordial, 
iconoclastic books that give a stab at portraying human 
passion and human experience as they are, but that 
leave little hope in the human heart. The seventh 
book was “The Lily Pond.” Elizabeth read the title 
twice and picked the book up in her hands. She had 
not recognized it at first in its cheaper binding. The 


98 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


remaining three books of the ten were English and like 
hers, of no particular distinction. Half of the ten, at least, 
she believed to be the result of an unhealthy neurosis. 

Then the charming one led her into the office, and she 
faced Frederick Franks, a surly, black man with an 
all-conquering manner. 

“Just the same elusive spirit?” he questioned with a 
prolonged, hovering smile. 

“Just the same,” Elizabeth repeated vaguely. “Do 
they always have red hair?” she asked as the girl left the 
room. 

“Always curly red hair; always in their teens, and 
pretty; but common, sidewalk souls. And you, you have 
another book?” 

Elizabeth tapped her head, falling into line as she 
had done in the past when talking to the man with a 
thousand gestures. “You will print it when I have clip- 
clopped it down?” 

“I will at least read it,” the black man said cautiously. 

“Thank you.” 

“How do you like the new “Ten-Edition?” It has 
brought you who do not need it, much money. No one, 
no one, I tell you, can manage your books so well for you 
as Frederick Franks. Remember that, Mrs. Slater. A 
high-brow publishing house like your husband’s gets the 
name perhaps and the fame, but old Frederick Franks 
gets the chink, chink, chink.” 

“Some time there will be a check?” Elizabeth asked 
with an unpleasant sense of embarrassment. 

“You have neglected to cash in your last nine. Alto¬ 
gether, I am indebted to you—wait a minute—I am 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


99 


indebted to you thirty-two thousand dollars and seventy- 
six cents.” 

“Pay me now.” 

Five minutes later, Elizabeth descended the short flight 
of brownstone steps, with a happy feeling of power. 
Opposite Franks’ was an office where one could buy 
tickets that would take one around the world, to 
northernmost Alaska or to the moon. It was because of 
this shop opposite that she had come so speedily down 
the avenue. 

Elizabeth crossed the street and climbed another flight 
of brownstone steps, the counterpart of the ones she had 
just come down. It was like completing a geometric 
figure. This was where her mother had always booked 
when she wanted to escape New York. The firm name 
had changed and the humble clerks had gone. Still there 
were tickets that would carry one to strange places. 
Elizabeth’s mind spun dizzily as she read the foreign 
names affixed to poster pictures hanging on the walls and 
felt the intoxicating possibilities awaiting the fearless. 
The following moment she dubbed herself a “tame tilly,” 
as she heard herself inquiring about spring sailings for 
England with a landing preferably at Dover. Stodgy, 
familiar England, when there was a world of strange 
places to choose from! 

“Wait until the first of April and I’ll fix you up all 
righty, righty,” a straw-colored man advised. 

She agreed. 

“The name?” 

“Mrs. Azore Lawrence.” 

Elizabeth dropped her eyes guiltily from the flamboy- 


100 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


ant walls with the geographical names so suggestive in a 
a pinch. 

“And one child/” she volunteered slowly, “a little 
daughter, Florence Lawrence.” Good Heavens! Eliza¬ 
beth gasped inwardly, as she looked swiftly away from a 
map of Italy. “Florence is nine,” she added helpfully. 
There was no permanent address. She would be in again 
in three or four days and complete the arrangements. 

Elizabeth turned reluctantly toward home. She knew 
herself to be shocked by Mrs. Azore Lawrence and her 
little daughter, Florence. For any woman who fled from 
her husband under an assumed name and buried herself 
in foreign lands like a rabbit in his warren, assuredly 
loved her husband and was driven forth by a romantic 
impulse. That, at least, had been a firmly rooted con¬ 
viction. She struggled to psychoanalyze the mental 
impulse that could create for her a Mrs. Azore Lawrence. 
The act was out of line, irrational, the result of a 
repressed impulse. Or could it be some unrecognized 
process, a sublimation? She had intended to talk her 
departure over frankly with Arch. She had never con¬ 
templated doing otherwise; at least as far as her con¬ 
scious self knew, she never had. And yet, she caught 
herself taking the initial steps toward going in a surrepti¬ 
tious way which she despised. 

Why had she done this, suddenly and without premedi¬ 
tation, she kept asking herself as she sped swiftly up 
the avenue. Life with Arch was of a bleakness she 
would be glad to escape. Of this she was certain, for 
already she had begun to feel the inner spring that had 
failed her since her marriage. Since it had come back, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


101 


she knew she had, in her wild dash, not been rash but 
right. 

Elizabeth stopped at the flower shop she had passed 
earlier in the morning and bought a bunch of primroses 
and pansies for each of the children. While the clerk 
was giving her a handful of newly minted silver, pains¬ 
takingly counted out, as if he would emphasize the fact 
that even primroses have their price, her countenance 
cleared, for she believed she knew the reason for Mrs. 
Azore Lawrence. She never would have created her 
if she had been able to secure passage for England on 
the following day. But to talk her departure over with 
Arch, that was an agony to be avoided. She would tell 
him, but not yet. In the meantime it was fortunate that 
the steamship agent did not have her name. 

Anthony Slater stood waiting for Elizabeth in the 
library, a slim, graceful figure, silhouetted black against 
the noon sun which was shining into the room. When he 
turned to meet her, the tragic desperate expression of the 
boy shocked her. “You have seen Arch?” she asked 
with fierce apprehension. 

“Just came from his office. He’s all right. Gosh! 
Elizabeth, you look more like a boy than any one of 
your sons. Remember that if you have the franchise, 
you haven’t yet attained to a sirdom” 

“Or my s-u-r-dom,” she admitted carelessly, while she 
waited for Anthony to regain his control. “Won’t you 
lunch with me and the children? It will be a nursery 
meal of long duration and infinite chatter, for it’s Green- 
leaf’s birthday, and as a special treat we are to have 
rice pudding with fat raisins sprinkled through it. Don’t 


102 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


be alarmed, there will be spinach, so excellent a vegetable 
for the young, and fried chicken-wings. Godkin fairly 
ruined Greenleaf’s good looks, because he flatly refused 
to have a birthday cake and ice cream. His face is 
gashed and purple, and Godkin sulks gloomily, envious 
of his own handiwork. I am so sorry,” she said, turning 
impulsively toward her brother-in-law. “Something is 
troubling you. Can I help?” 

“I need none.” 

“Did Arch refuse to-” 

“He gave me a hundred dollars. I need lots more.” 

“How much more?” 

“Twenty thousand dollars more,” Anthony turned a 
shade pinker than he already was. 

“Dear Anthony, I am so glad there is something I can 
do for you. Money seems to be the one commodity in 
the world with which I am oversupplied.” Elizabeth 
spoke gaily for Anthony’s trouble was one easy to 
remedy. 

“You don’t mean you could lend me twenty thousand 
dollars,” Anthony blurted thickly. “I didn’t come for 
help.” 

“As easily as rolling off a log. And now you will stay 
to luncheon. The children will be wild with joy.” 

“I need it now.” 

Elizabeth hastened swiftly upstairs. When she re¬ 
turned with a small white check, written with her order 
and signature, she found Anthony standing by the front 
door, ready to bolt. “Arch might have lent it,” he 
paused, conscientiously to explain, “but I couldn’t ask 
him. Until I am established in business, he allows me 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


103 


a hundred a month. Even that amount he finds diffi¬ 
cult to lend, for with a growing family and the shooting 
cost of living, he hardly meets his own bills, and I may 
never be able to meet the obligation.” 

With trembling fingers Anthony touched for one 
instant Elizabeth’s delicate hand and then left her. 

Elizabeth sat down on a hall chair, too angry to move. 
It was cruel of Arch to refuse any of her ever- 
increasingly-useless income to run the family. If he 
would only allow himself a vacation and work fewer 
hours, he might be less ferocious. 

What was the use of her mother’s fortune and Aunt 
Fan’s legacy? Was her money to bring her nothing but 
beautiful frocks that made Julianna envious, and the 
doubtful pleasure of giving large sums to charities of 
which she more than half disapproved? Once she had 
bought a famous collection of violins that had been 
suddenly thrown on the market. Through the director 
of a symphony society, she had succeeded in giving them 
to musicians to whom they would be of use, for she con¬ 
sidered a man who made a collection of violins a felon 
and she passionately hated his crime. But the process 
of what she considered merely a just restitution had been 
accompanied by surprising difficulties and finally by 
embarrassment. The story of her beneficence—that was 
the word used—had appeared simultaneously in three 
Sunday papers with a rehashed notice of “The Lily 
Pond,” and the Slaters were annoyed. 

“I suppose you can’t help being bizarre,” Julianna 
grieved. “If you had to purchase the violins, I fail to 
see why you couldn’t have presented them to the Boston 


104 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Museum of Art. Goodness! To give away a fortune to 
strangers! I never knew anything so crazy.” 

After dinner that same night, Elizabeth forced Arch to 
hear about the birthday party and Godkin’s sulks because 
Greenleaf had carried off the scars of war. 

“You don’t understand. Boys aren’t like that,” Arch 
said. “I know they are not,” he reemphasized as he saw 
a skeptical smile hovering about Elizabeth’s eyes. “It’s 
a sure thing.” 

“Anthony came to the house for about ten minutes,” 
she then said, willing to let him have his way. “He 
refused to stay to the party. Has he gone back to Bos¬ 
ton? He seemed very much troubled. Has some mis¬ 
fortune overtaken him?” 

“Anthony came to this house, this morning,” Arch 
repeated slowly. Then he put down the book he had 
been reading and faced his wife. 

“Yes, about noon. He seemed desperate.” 

“Good God! You have given him money!” 

“I have.” 

“How much money?” 

“Goodness, Arch, don’t be so angry.” 

“How much?” 

“Twenty thousand.” 

“And no questions asked.” 

“You are bitter.” 

“It was one of Anthony’s debts of honor—a gambling 
debt. Did you never know that Anthony gambled? It 
is not a pastime with him. It is a vice.” 

“It is one of the attractive vices,” Elizabeth said 
lightly, “full of daring and adventure.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


105 


“Where does it end? In debts; debts that can never 
be paid, borrowing from the women of the family, shady 
dealings with dishonest lenders, restlessness of spirit, 
disintegration.” 

“Anthony didn’t borrow any money from me. He 
didn’t ask me to lend him any. I saw he was in trouble 
and when I found it was money that he needed, why, 
naturally, I gave him a check.” 

“But he took it.” Arch spoke with exceeding bitter¬ 
ness. “I don’t believe that a man who has a passion for 
gambling, has ever the power to give it up. God! It 
is a fool way to throw away life. Anthony was born to be 
the best of the Slaters in our generation. Fie has lost 
his chance.” 

“But is gambling a crime?” 

“It makes criminals. I gambled when I was in school 
and of course again when I was in Harvard. All men are 
bound to try it. My sons will experiment in their turn. 
It is of paramount importance to give them loose rein. 
But if they have any sense, they will eventually come out 
right. Gambling is the muddiest water man has invented 
for his nightly souse.” 

“Anthony won’t give it up?” 

“Can’t. Once in a while there is born a man who 
can’t. It’s in the blood, a taint as damnable as some of 
the diseases we all know about and don’t dare to men¬ 
tion, and just about as ineradicable. I love Anthony, 
but I can’t expect you to understand that, you, who 
don’t know what love means.” Arch clenched his hands 
that shook and continued, “Mother finally cut him off. 
That was a rotten mistake, so I give him enough to pay 


106 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


his shoe bills and he lives at home. But I won’t pay 
his gambling debts and you won’t either.” 

With these words Arch brought his hand emphatically 
down on Elizabeth’s shoulder and she winced. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“Neuritis.” 

Arch fixed accusing eyes on his wife. “That is the 
first time you ever deliberately lied to me.” 

Elizabeth turned crimson. “Yesterday,” she said, 
“when you pushed me out of your study you hurt my 
shoulder. It turned purple and is painful to the touch. 
You have to treat it gently,” she stumbled ahead 
hopelessly. 

“The devil!” Arch stood still staring at his wife. 
“Women are soft,” he finally said. “I forget. Oh, I am 
a savage! I don’t intend to hurt. I should never touch 
you. I never will again if I can remember. I don’t start 
out to be a brute. You seem like a younger brother. 
Why don’t you hit back? Damn it! Women have 
divorced their husbands for less than that!” 

“Or run away from them.” These words which trickled 
gaily from Elizabeth’s brain sounded mean and flat when 
brought to light. “Marriage is a beastly institution, 
anyway you approach it,” she added swiftly. 

“Beastly!” 

“You didn’t think so once,” she said, stung to resent¬ 
ment. “Wouldn’t you be glad to be well out of it?” 

“Hell! No! You and the boys are the one thing in 
life I care about—except, perhaps, ideas. You and the 
children are inextricably mixed. Can’t you understand 
you are the same block? It’s cursed,” he said hope- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


107 


lessly to himself, rather than to Elizabeth, “how a man 
hurts most what he treasures.” 

“It’s a strange fate that most of us are denied the 
power to be of real service to those we hold most dear. 
In training the boys, I feel that I am advancing on chaos 
and dark night, and when I think I understand what 
they have done or felt, you say I am wrong.” 

“Better leave the boys to me,” Arch said shortly. 

“That is what I have decided to do.” 

“Thank God!” 

Again Elizabeth winced. “And there is Anthony. You 
seem to have given Anthony up. Is there nothing you 
can do for him?” 

“I? I? No. He is letting his mind go fallow. See here, 
Elizabeth, you and Anthony are somewhat alike. Both 
of you are out of the usual running. Can’t you help 
him?” 

“You know I have no special convictions about gam¬ 
bling. You say it is worse than the other so-called 
vices.” 

“I don’t understand your ‘so-called vices.’ Good is 
good and bad is bad. People either live with law or 
against law. All vice is devastating.” 

“People who live by principle are living by tradition— 
by the hand-me-downs of their fathers’ archaic ideas, 
very uncomfortable and sometimes barbarous. Anthony 
has specialized on something that is destructive, perhaps, 
but he is enjoying it. We can’t all do constructive work. 
If we did the world would be crowded with horrible 
things.” 

“You don’t believe what you are saying.” 


108 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth, who had been walking restlessly about the 
room, stopped short. “I believe it very much more than 
you have any idea.” 

“I don’t care what you say,” Arch roared, “y° u have 
inherited all the old-fashioned virtues of your race. But 
I wish to God you wouldn’t talk like a fool.” 


CHAPTER VII 


A week later, Arch, in response to a peremptory tele¬ 
gram from his mother, went to Boston. He believed the 
summons concerned Anthony and he wasted no time in 
going. 

Arch, who found Madame Slater in her super-calm 
mood, instantly knew by her high attitude that she had 
made some decision of moment which concerned the wel¬ 
fare of the clan. She was likely to think any home prob¬ 
lem through to rigid conclusion, form a definite convic¬ 
tion concerning the right course of action, and to hold 
tenaciously to that course. 

Well pleased that her son had come so promptly, 
Madame Slater received him in her most kindly manner. 
Her gracious femininity was very soothing to Arch. 
Lunching thus alone with his mother was a happy experi¬ 
ence for with the wrangling clan dispersed, he found his 
mood almost invariably in happy accord with hers. By 
the time salad had replaced the tenderloin, he concluded 
that the summons was not of tribal importance, having to 
do, very likely, with one of the married connections. 

After displaying her latest Georgian acquisitions, and 
reading aloud scraps from the family letters, Madame 
Slater finally preceded her son out into the bleak garden 
where they seated themselves on a high-backed bench, 
secure from interruption and warmed by the early spring 
sun. 

Arch counted the snowdrops swaying in a frail line in 
front of a Greek pergola, listened to the zoom-zoom of a 
109 


110 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


bumble-bee, and in relaxed mood waited for his mother 
to speak. But when she began his heart stood still. 
For what she had to say was concerning his wife. 

“Archibald, I am afraid you have lost Elizabeth.” 

Madame Slater’s voice trembled a little and she went 
white as she gave voice to her anxiety. Then she dropped 
her knitting in her lap and waited for her son to shout 
precisely the words she knew he would shout under the 
circumstances. When she believed he was quite done, 
she continued, “As I anticipated, you are disinclined to 
listen to what I have to say. Don’t you think the wiser 
course is to hear me through?” 

“What you want to rub in is the fact that you don’t 
approve of my marriage.” 

“That hasn’t much bearing on the subject,” Madame 
Slater said judicially. “Naturally, I would have chosen 
for you a girl like Lucy Penrose, who is our kind. But 
you are married to Elizabeth Duncan. She is your wife 
and the mother of your three sons. Of my grandchildren, 
they are the most promising. Contrary to anything I 
dared to hope, Elizabeth is an excellent mother, a good 
disciplinarian. Very wisely she lets many things slip, 
but when it comes to what she considers a cardinal prin¬ 
ciple, she is rock. I have never known her to nag. I 
may as well admit, I admire the way she manages the 
boys.” 

“Then you no longer look upon my marriage as an act 
of insanity and wickedness?” 

Madame Slater fixed honest eyes on her son. “We are 
not congenial,” she said coldly. “She is too restless. I 
feel infinitely sorry for her. It is for her sake that I 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


111 


asked you to come here today. I, who have seen more 
of life than you and who know more about marriage 
and its effect on high-strung women, am persuaded 
Elizabeth has reached the point where, if too much strain 
is put upon her, if any more strain is put upon her, she 
will break.” 

“Good heavens, Mother, you talk as if I were a brute.” 

“You are a brute.” 

“I may be somewhat at fault, but I do confess to hav¬ 
ing an idea that the children come first. What can I do 
to prevent the children being paramount?” 

“I quite understand your point of view. All women, 
however, can’t take that attitude, natural and just as 
it may seem to you. There are other things in life 
besides a nursery, even for mothers of beautiful chil¬ 
dren such as yours.” 

“I am not blaming Elizabeth.” 

“You are mistaken in thinking you don’t blame your 
wife. You are harsh in your criticism of her and extra¬ 
ordinarily censorious,” Madame Slater continued merci¬ 
lessly. “And really, Arch, you are the least livable 
member of the family. You have no right not to control 
your temper or to think only of doing your way. You 
are very selfish.” 

“All this sounds familiar.” 

Madame Slater blushed. “The last time I broached 
the subject of your temper to you—the day before your 
marriage—I felt my effort to be wholly wasted. But as 
long as I live, I can never cease feeling responsible for 
you, I suppose. And whenever I see you plunging 
toward a precipice, I shall warn you.” 


112 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“About me and Elizabeth you are wholly mistaken.” 
Arch now spoke more gently as he pulled his watch out 
to see how many more minutes he had left to spend with 
his mother. “Elizabeth is an exception to the general 
run of women. She can do but one thing at a time. 
That one thing, she does with her whole might. It is not 
always the children. I fail to understand why the boys 
don’t satisfy her, or how she dares to demand more of 
life. Anyhow, keep on hammering me. I am the easy 
dupe of my own will.” 

“You are like your father.” 

Arch fixed keen eyes on his mother’s still slightly 
flushed face. This was the first time, even by implica¬ 
tion, he had ever heard his father’s name criticized. 

“Elizabeth misses her Aunt Fan painfully. I discov¬ 
ered that the last time she visited me.” 

“She was a woman of fine and noble nature.” 

“She was the last of Elizabeth’s kin who took any 
special interest in her.” 

“But Elizabeth doesn’t care a rag for family ties.” 

“How can she reasonably be expected to know the 
bulwark of strength a family like ours furnishes each 
of its members?” 

“There is Julianna.” 

“Julianna! Julianna is an insignificant, humdrum 
New Englander with provincial ambitions and cherished 
prejudices. She is astonishingly self-satisfied, a kind 
soul, but easy going, altogether too easy going.” 

In answer to a surprised look on Arch’s face, she con¬ 
tinued, “I see the faults of my children distinctly, and 
their fine qualities, too; and in spite of both I manage 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


113 


to love them. You all depend on me more than you 
know, if only as a convenient springboard. I treat you 
alike. Those with the noblest natures, I love best—you 
and Anthony. And for my poor first-born, I am more 
compassionate. I appear most tender toward him. He 
needs me most. The beginning of my married life, 
Arch, was difficult. But I knew my husband had a noble 
nature, very much like yours, and I was practical. But 
Elizabeth is not practical and, Arch, you haven’t lived up 
to your inherited expression as yet. I have a right to 
expect better things of you than anything you have 
accomplished. You were born to be a leader of men. 
You are wasting your life in a publishing house, earning 
money. Rather than accept anything from your wife, 
you drub away in an office until you are bad tempered. 
You wear old clothes and are hurt with your wife because 
she is extravagant. With your ability and the traditions 
of your race, and Elizabeth’s intelligence and fortune, 
you could do almost anything. The country needs men 
of your type, men of integrity and power.” 

With numb fingers Madame Slater knitted twice 
around her army sock in silence. She longed to have her 
son tell her what was in his heart. That, perhaps, was 
too much to expect. Time was passing and he would 
soon be on his way back to New York. There were two 
things she must say to him before he went back to New 
York. She felt loath to speak. How ridiculous of her 
to feel awkward in the presence of one of her children! 
She cleared her throat and hesitated. 

Arch looked at her reminiscently. Funny habit his 
mother had of clearing the decks, so to speak, before 


114 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


levelling her guns. She always used to hesitate that way 
when he was a youngster, before she let fire. He braced 
himself for the shot which was to bring him to the 
ground. 

“Kate Winton and Archibald Satterlee are at last 
divorced,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Elizabeth 
was at one time head over heels in love with Mr. Sat¬ 
terlee. The attachment, I understand, was mutual, and 
now that he is free-” 

“But Elizabeth chose to marry me: she wasn’t forced.” 

“Madame Duncan was very much troubled, for she 
believed Elizabeth loved you both. I was not particu¬ 
larly worried at the time, for I believed you had the 
power and the will to hold your wife.” 

“But Elizabeth is a married woman. She isn’t ro¬ 
mantic. God! How can a married woman be romantic?” 

Madame Slater folded her sock and rose to her feet. “I 
see Michael has brought the car around. You have 
ample time to meet your train. I am sending Elizabeth 
a box of my snowdrops. You will find them with your 
bag. By the way, Arch, I wish you would think the 
matter over again, before you continue Anthony’s 
allowance. Do you really understand him better than I 
do?” 

Madame Slater held out both hands and Archibald 
kissed her on either cheek. “Thank you, Mother,” he 
said. “I know you are wrong about Elizabeth and I 
don’t agree with you about my abilities, but I would 
gladly travel farther than from New York to Boston for 
the pleasure of having a visit with you.” 

“Where is Mrs. Slater?” Arch demanded in a loud 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


115 


voice, when he entered his own house at about eight 
o’clock that evening. He felt annoyingly comforted to 
be told she was in. “I will go up to see the children 
first, and then I will be down to dinner. There is 
dinner?” 

Satisfactorily assured that there was dinner, Arch 
dashed up stairs, two steps at a time, suddenly angry 
with Elizabeth. For now it appeared to him that she 
was responsible for his senseless trip to Boston. She 
must have done something damned queer to make his 
calm mother send for him. He’d been so worried all the 
way down to New York, he couldn’t read or smoke 
or even talk connectedly with a Harvard man who was a 
forester and who had some interesting facts to tell him. 

In irascible mood, he paused in front of Elizabeth’s 
door, undecided whether to go in and scold her or to go 
directly to the children with the packages of leaden 
soldiers he had brought them. The box of snowdrops 
he had left somewhere en route, darn it! The pause was 
so unusual that Elizabeth, who heard him, came out into 
the hall. “How is Mother?” she asked. 

“Quite Georgian. She sent for me for family reasons,” 
he added stiffly. “I met Ledger Wigton coming down. 
He is working for the Forestry Preserve, in Wyoming. 
He is an original chap. Invite him to dinner sometime 
this week. He is on his way West. I have an idea he 
would enjoy girls and good things to eat. You might 
make a party.” 

Elizabeth concealed her surprise and felt guilty for the 
suppression. This was the first time in two years Arch 
had wanted to entertain dinner guests in his own house, 


116 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


with the exception, of course, of the clan to whom he 
gave a perfunctory welcome at all times. He frankly 
expressed his preference for a man’s dinner at a man’s 
club. 

But Elizabeth was concealing something else that made 
her feel more guilty and which forced her to wonder if 
she had, hidden away in her nature, the germs of deceit. 
Only the day before she had locked up in the secret 
drawer of her writing desk two steamer tickets, one for 
Mrs. Azore Lawrence and one for her daughter, Florence 
Lawrence, which gave them passage on the Homeric , 
sailing at noon, on April sixth. There had been a time 
when she would have been unequivocally frank. What 
had life done to her to make of her a poltroon? 

Arch heard himself suggest the party for Wigton with 
surprise, for his suggestion had been wholly unpremedi¬ 
tated and he began to realize that he was, at least the 
latent part of him was, worried by the admonishment of 
his mother. 

“Hang it all,” he thought, “there may be a modicum of 
truth in the Freudian bug, after all.” And he passed 
hastily on to the nursery where, to his chagrin, he found 
the boys asleep. 


CHAPTER VTII 


The dinner party scarcely escaped being dull, for Eliza¬ 
beth had invited the kind of girls Arch thought Wigton 
liked but didn’t. At any rate, the girls didn’t smoke or 
swear or slang or sit on the tops of tables or flirt. It was 
a decorous affair, one to be proud of. Something good 
might be said of the pretty frocks, clear complexions and 
modest manners of the young things who, since they had 
not learned to make large demands upon life, were having 
a beautiful time. Both Arch and Ledger Wigton had an 
air of waiting till something boresome were over, while 
Elizabeth, despite her first aids and swift coverings, 
developed a deprecatory manner toward the younger 
men, who were resentful. 

Ledger Wigton stayed on after the party. “I wish you 
would smoke with us and let me call you Elizabeth,” he 
said when he saw his hostess preparing to leave them. 
“You are about the most adorable woman I ever ran up 
against. How you have managed to live ten years with 
Archibald Slater and keep your sparkle, I’d give a 
hundred dollars to know. He is a perfect man for a 
man, but to be his wedded wife—gosh all hemlocks!” 

“That ten years was even more terrible than you can 
picture it. Naturally it can’t continue.” 

Elizabeth spoke gaily with a delicious feeling of free¬ 
dom, though she knew neither of the men would take her 
words seriously. “I don’t smoke, but I’ll stay down if 
you will tell me how you fight forest fires. I want to be 
thrilled. I read in a magazine how flames, starting from 
117 


118 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


a camp fire, jumped from tree to tree until a great confla¬ 
gration went roaring off through miles of timberland in 
the heart of the Rockies.” 

“Balderdash!” Arch jerked as he lighted his briar- 
wood. 

“The damned truth,” his guest corroborated. “What 
you said,” he continued, turning to Elizabeth, “sounded 
half like a Pinchot quote, but the facts are more than 
magazine facts. You can’t get around them any more 
than I can get around the fires. That is my main 
business—fighting forest fires. I started out to be a 
planter of trees, but I soon saw that was the wrong end 
of the job. One match can destroy five hundred thou¬ 
sand years’ growth of trees or a thousand trees of five 
hundred years’ growth, in a day. We have got to have 
tighter forest laws and more of them. We must have 
more mounted police. They should have the right to 
shoot a man down who accidentally or intentionally sets 
fire to any piece of timberland. While most men of my 
profession write articles and hang around lobbies and 
speak to women’s clubs, waiting for the government to 
pass laws that will protect us, the forests keep on being 
destroyed by fire and axe. I cackled about Washington, 
as ignorant as a hen with no teeth and no friends. After 
a second winter of harrowing suspense, I put on my put¬ 
tees and went into active service, and there is my place. 
See here, Archibald Slater, what do you mean by wasting 
yourself mooning around a silken office and writing little 
essays, instead of getting out into the open and fighting? 
You are the quarrelsome kind I’m pining for. I jolly well 
bet you vent your bad temper on the innocent. Why not 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


119 


spill your vitriol on some of the political demagogues who 
block my path? Help me!” 

“How help you?” 

“Take up the political side.” 

“Get Tom Blake.” 

“He’s hot on riparian rights.” 

“A dead issue. Makes it an excuse for fishing.” 

“Not on your life! He’s an expert authority. The 
United States Government finds his advice useful. He 
makes men listen. I bet you could do him ten better, 
if you weren’t so darned conservative. You are caught 
in that hell of a canyon called Fifth Avenue, and there 
you stick like a five-ton motor truck in a mudhole. The 
life out there is the cream of Uncle Sam’s holdings. 
William Phillips isn’t the only man who ever rode a horse 
to fame and glory.” 

“Who is William Phillips?” 

“If you don’t know Bill Phillips, you are a better New 
Englander than you are an American.” 

“The children know,” Elizabeth said, happy once to 
have caught her husband napping. “Aunt Fan was 
acquainted with some of his descendants. Bill was a 
Jackson man: just now he is Godkin’s hero.” 

Arch, who was afraid Elizabeth would prejudice the 
boys in favor of the South and teach them unsubstanti¬ 
ated facts, withdrew from the conversation and frowned 
moodily into the business section of the evening paper, 
which he never read. 

“Ledger Wigton is an extraordinary man,” Arch said 
to Elizabeth after his guest had gone, “but he has to be 
taken with margins.” 


120 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“He makes trees seem like real people, only nobler,” 
Elizabeth said, looking dreamily into the fire and but 
faintly conscious of Arch’s growing wrath. “I hope when 
I die I may become a tree. I would choose to be a 
Mariposa pine on Mount Ranier. A man burned down 
a swathe of them for a view. It makes me rage to think 
we wasted three hours on the prim little girls who 
couldn’t speak without smiling and Oyessing or Onoing.” 

“At least, they had some sense. I hope Lize will grow 
to be like them.” 

“You were no end bored.” 

“Not more than by any other batch of women. At 
least they weren’t disgusting. And they didn’t pretend 
to have an idea between them.” 

“That is why they couldn’t converse.” 

“What woman can? I never met one yet who had an 
idea, unless it was secondhand. What do women eternally 
want? Admiration. They will stand for a limitless 
amount of flattery, go any length to get it, and when they 
get it, they want more.” 

Arch brought his fist down on the library table with a 
blow that smashed a carved paper cutter he was holding. 
The clever knife had been designed and carved by 
Anthony the first year he was in prep school and it was 
one of the few possessions that Arch treasured. Angered 
by this accident, he continued rabidly, “Women will do 
anything or say anything or be anything for a little flat¬ 
tery. Any man can lead any woman around by the nose 
if he will make of his mouth a repeating machine.” 

Arch flung the shattered paper cutter into the fire and 
continued bitterly, “Women have no sense of honor. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


121 


Who ever heard of a decent man cheating at cards? Or 
cheating taxi drivers? Or betraying friends? Women 
don’t even know what it means to be straight. I hate 
their distilled, vapid minds, their nebulous, hazy speech. 
I loathe their swans-down cheeks and their naked bodies, 
their polished finger nails and their painted lips. I 
loathe their perfumeries. Any woman who will pay fif¬ 
teen dollars for a bottle of French perfumery because she 
thinks it makes her alluring when that fifteen dollars 
would feed a starving baby for a month, is a criminal. 
Why do they go about exposing their soft, sweet-smelling 
flesh if it is not to stir our passions? Why do they put a 
thousand dollars into a rag of a dress? Or aimlessly buy 
a pearl necklace or a fur coat so loosely cut that it can’t 
even keep them warm? We are on the rim of chaos. It 
is a question whether we can pull off. What are we to do 
when we have this mass of heartless, silly women ham¬ 
pering every known mode of action, wrangling and 
tangling about our feet like nests of vipers around a 
Mariposa pine? First, they have to be dressed, eternally 
dressed. Otherwise, we are cruel and unsympathetic. 
There is nothing good enough for them, not even our souls 
which they want for playthings. They are insatiable 
and their clamor never ceases. God! I wish Lize had 
never been born. Mother, of course, and—you-” 

But Elizabeth had gone. Arch found himself staring 
into an empty chair where his wife had been seated when 
he last looked at her. “Hell!” he said huffily. “She is 
soft like the others. Can’t stand anything like a 
criticism.” 

Furiously he kicked the low-burning log on the fire- 



122 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


dogs into a thousand glowing coals, and replaced the high 
screen, preparatory to going to his own room. Evidently, 
he let his wife get him in the quick. He tried to under¬ 
stand how it was that Elizabeth could so hurt him. Her 
very presence was an irritation. He was tortured, he 
knew, by physical repression. There were to be no more 
children. He despised gross indulgence. His Puritanical 
soul shuddered away from practical preventions—circum¬ 
ventions of the law of nature. He saw in such living final 
degradation. Before he had known Elizabeth, he had 
lived happily enough as a bachelor. Why not now? He 
deliberately put himself on the only honorable road 
there was, and nature tortured him for his choice. 


CHAPTER IX 


Elizabeth had fled to her own room to escape the noise. 
For a long time she sat motionless by the open window, 
letting the slow tears roll down her cheeks. It seemed to 
her that her heart would break. Her mind finally fixed 
on the new setting forth. She and Lize would steal forth 
from the house like thieves in the night. It no longer 
seemed possible to talk her separation over with Arch. 
When had she been able to talk anything over with him? 

At last, Elizabeth crossed the room to her desk and 
began writing a letter to her husband. Her heart beat 
high till she felt that she was smothering. She decided to 
make it a letter of facts. First she told him by what 
ship she was sailing, then her destination, and then her 
banker’s address. If he wanted to divorce her, she would 
not contest. She asked for full control of Lize. He could 
have the boys. Here Elizabeth paused—a stab in her 
heart. What could she possibly write about the boys 
that Arch would understand? Finally she signed her 
name in full as if she were putting it to a legal document, 
Elizabeth Duncan Slater. After a long while, two hours, 
perhaps, she added these words. “I don’t think it worth 
while to go on. I have looked at it plainly from every 
side and come to the conclusion that it isn’t worth while. 
For the boys, you will say. I know; but truly, I don’t 
think I am much use to them. You have taken over so 
completely the training of their minds and what people 
used to call their souls. If I could die for them instead 
123 


124 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


of live for them, how much better I should like that. I 
have a lot more I might say to you, but it can’t be 
pleasant reading. Please forgive my marrying you at 
all. I can’t see why I ever did. 

“Elizabeth.” 

Elizabeth again crossed the room, this time to get a 
handkerchief. She had been crying without one, wiping 
her tears away with the back of her hand. It was not 
pretty or au fait. She laughed grimly, but she was very 
unhappy. She was like a plant, she told herself, that had 
been pruned and pruned and pruned and just when it had 
begun to grow had been shrivelled by a black frost. She 
took her pen and wrote in cramped letters below the 
Elizabeth, “Do you see any use in living at all? Do you 
see any reason why we should have been placed in this 
beastly, damnable world? Do you see what it is for?” 

She looked at her calendar and counted the days before 
her freedom, like a felon whose term had nearly expired. 
April sixth was close upon her. She began feverishly 
destroying things, for if she would not take much with 
her over the sea, there was much that she would not 
leave to merciless in-laws. She felt sorry to abandon her 
austere, grey room, so shadowy and so quiet. She won¬ 
dered what the next Mrs. Slater would do with it. Change 
everything, of course, to just the opposite'. It was 
inevitable that there should be a new Mrs. Slater—and 
changes. Arch, she imagined, would stay on in the house 
which he owned and to which he was deeply attached 
and, when the conventional time allotted such cases as 
theirs had passed, divorce her and take unto himself a 
new Mrs. Archibald. But what was the conventional 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


125 


time? Madame Slater would, of course, know, and he 
would, of course, consult her. 

When at last a brilliant dawn dimmed the electric 
lamps on table and desk to pale balls of fire, Elizabeth 
pushed from her a heap of business letters and bills she 
had been perfunctorily examining. It was a golden morn¬ 
ing. Quite suddenly, she felt unreasonably happy and 
hopeful. On such a day, what new glory might not befall 
the world? 


CHAPTER X 


The morning of April sixth, Elizabeth attended to her 
housekeeping for the day as usual, and as usual, she sent 
the three boys off to school with Anne Preston. Then she 
ordered a taxi, told old Andrew that she and her little 
daughter would be out for the day, and placed her letter 
to Arch on his desk. The Homeric sailed at ten. At 
half-past nine, she left the house with Lize and the lug¬ 
gage. It was an easy exit. Anne was still out, and 
Andrew was not curious. She was very late getting down 
town. Possibly she was the last passenger to cross the 
gangway. 

The wind and rain had cleared the decks, so Elizabeth 
made her way to her stateroom without meeting anyone 
whom she knew. It had not occurred to her until the 
taxi rolled down the cavernous, windy dock that she 
might encounter friends, and to encounter friends might 
be awkward. She told the truth about things, untroubled, 
if the truth did not trouble her listener. She imagined 
herself saying, “I am going to England to live. No, I 
have not quarrelled with my husband . . . There is no 
one else . . . Incompatibility.” That was the techni¬ 
cal word for a world of sorrow. But her listener would 
be embarrassed and deadly curious. 

Having put her little daughter, who was very much 
excited, to bed, Elizabeth called for a passenger list. 
Among the number there were half a dozen names, at least, 
with whom she had dined sometime or other. The easiest 
126 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


127 


way, the only way, would be to lie. But how? She 
looked at the list again. Mrs. Azore Lawrence, Florence 
Lawrence, stared her in the face. She had intended to 
have the names corrected at the last hour, but had let it 
slip. She saw herself exasperatingly enmeshed in a 
tangle of small lies. This was not the way she would 
begin her life of freedom. 

Encompassed by the walls of her cabin, Elizabeth felt 
very safe; she had never felt so safe in her life. Lize lay 
cool and quiet, her inquiring dark eyes fixed on her 
mother’s face. Already the throbbing engine was carry¬ 
ing her away from a million entangling duties into a new 
and happier existence. A sudden lurch of the ship sent 
her on her knees, shut up like a jackknife. Recovering 
herself, she crawled to the sofa in front of the window, 
and looked out upon the cold grey ocean. The waters 
swelled and then slid away, letting the boat drop down 
into a bottomless trough. She loved the feeling of the 
heaving waters beneath her, the eddying waves, the 
pulsating machinery, the crying wind. So had she loved 
the sea in the old days. The crest of a great wave slopped 
against the cabin window, and dulled the room to a queer 
yellow-green. Elizabeth crept across the floor and onto 
the bed next to Lize. 

The storm held fierce and relentless until the ship 
docked at Dover. There were, after all, no lies to tell. 

As she lay, day after day, in the tidy white room, the 
tortured, impotent hopeless feeling that had been harry¬ 
ing her for so long a time, left her. She had been self- 
centered, devilishly so, and stupid of course, and 
burningly ashamed. Now, she felt, all this was ended. 













Part III 


FREEDOM 







CHAPTER I 


Landing in Liverpool in a thick fog was disillusioning. 
But, then, of course, Elizabeth had known it would be. 
The wet seaport town with its unrighteous odors and pur¬ 
suing noises stirred in her a horror of life. Vaguely she 
remembered visiting a museum or a gallery with her 
mother and being enchanted by a picture called, “The 
Triumph of the Innocents.” Afterwards, her mother had 
given her a colored print of it in a gold frame. And 
now she was driving through Liverpool with her daughter 
and through the same streets, where she saw now as then 

the same poverty, the same- With a pang, she looked 

down at the forlorn little girl at her side. What did she 
see that she was silent about? “Tomorrow,” she said 
gaily, as she put her arm about Lize, “we are going 
to Chester and from there to Carnarvon and so to 
Bethgelert.” 

In the long hours of her stormy passage across the 
Atlantic, Elizabeth had time to be anxious about Lize. 
Already she had begun to miss her brothers. She wanted 
her father. She was restless. She kept asking to go 
home. As for herself, Elizabeth passionately longed for 
a new life. Paths of possible joy seemed to radiate from 
her in many directions. Always, she had planned to live 
in London, to renew her friendship with Archibald Sat- 
terlee and through his eyes, perhaps, to get a clearer 
vision of life. But in the end she decided to go to Wales, 
where she could write without being bothered. 

131 


132 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth remembered being once in Bethgelert with 
her mother, when the hills were purple with bell-heath 
and the tops of the mountains, Moel Hebog and Snowden 
and all the others, were perpetually hidden in sea mist. 
She had loved the grey village with the rushing brook 
running through the middle of it; she had loved the 
ancient stone church and the cheerful clergyman who 
read the morning service, first in Welsh and then in Eng¬ 
lish, and the music cadenced to the wild rhythms of the 
rainstorms and the winds. Always, she had dreamed of 
returning to Bethgelert. 

Along either side of the mountain stream that cracked 
the town of Bethgelert apart, ran a stone wall and along 
the wall a road bordered by houses. Elizabeth and Lize, 
who immediately upon reaching their destination had 
taken their seats on this wall, watched the flaring coaches 
start with a bravado and gay pretense at style that 
delighted them. One turned toward Fflamberis, one 
toward Carnarvon, and one, a humble equipage, quietly 
took the Port Madoc road. The gentle wind which had 
been playing with Lize’s dark curls became a gust, lifted 
her hat with decision and dropped it into the swiftly flow¬ 
ing water. 

They watched it float rapidly away. “That is a good 
omen,” Elizabeth comforted her little daughter. “It 
means we are going to stay a long time. For, you see, we 
can’t possibly travel without hats.” 

“You have a hat,” Lize said doubtfully. 

“Oh! but I haven’t!” Elizabeth comforted as she 
dropped one of Rachel’s creations plump into the water in 
the exact spot where Lize’s had fallen. And so Eliza- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


133 


beth’s black chip followed Lize’s blue straw, presumably 
out to sea. 

But this foolish act did not please Lize, who had lost 
the happy feeling of stability she used to have at home, 
and she almost began to cry. 

“See that tiny house standing on the high rock, 
just opposite, the one with the dooryard yellow with 
primroses and going to be pink with hawthorne? Some¬ 
how, I feel that is our house. Those diamond-shaped 
windows that open like doors must belong to your room. 
I shall have the windows next to yours. Funny! The 
little woman who lives in that house doesn’t know it is 
ours. Let’s hurry up and tell her.” 

“How do you know she is a little woman?” Lize asked. 

“Because I just now saw a tiny little woman open the 
front door and go in. You can always tell by the way a 
person enters a house whether it is his or not.” 

A fortnight later, after Elizabeth and Lize had com¬ 
pletely settled in the house on the rock named Plas-tan-y- 
craig, their tiny Welsh maid, as delicate as a breath and 
as old as Moel Hebog, brought Elizabeth a bulky enve¬ 
lope, very importantly sealed. Elizabeth tore it open with 
impatient fingers, for it contained, or might contain, mail 
from America. The first letter she picked up was from 
her lawyers, a statement of her affairs and nothing else. 
It seemed to her that she was vulgarly and unrighteously 
rich. She was disappointed in Trivett & Trivett. Instead 
of embezzling or mismanaging her money as so many 
trustees seem to know how to do, they had gone on 
steadily investing her surplus income “in four per cent 
gilt-edged bonds, solid as Gibraltar,” they painstakingly 


134 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


assured her; and her income had gone on increasing 
amazingly. The Trivetts had an odd way of referring to 
her property as exhibits. Exhibit A was the accounting 
of the money left her by her father; Exhibit B, the prop¬ 
erty she had inherited from her mother; Exhibit C, the 
bequest made her by Aunt Fan. And now to simplify 
the management of her affairs, they had a fourth exhibit, 
made up entirely of property bought from her three 
accrued incomes. Having read through long rows of 
figures and dizzying sum-totals, Elizabeth wondered if 
she would like to buy a manor house somewhere near the 
sea and put her roots down deep in English soil. Her gay 
mother had a bevy of cousins scattered from one end of 
England to the other. Aunt Fan said it was this con¬ 
nection that had finally reconciled Madame Slater to her 
marriage with Arch. 

The second letter in the packet was from Anthony. It 
had been written before she sailed and sent to the New 
York house. Old Andrew had readdressed it. In this, 
she saw Arch’s methodical hand. Indifferently, Elizabeth 
opened the square envelope. Out fell a check for twenty 
thousand dollars. Anthony wrote, “I was mad as a hatter 
to think I possibly could take money from a woman, even 
from you, the lady of mercies. Forgive me and forget 
the fall of A. S.” 

Elizabeth put the note away sadly, for she knew Arch 
must have given Anthony the money. It had taken his 
share of their father’s property, probably all that he 
owned in the world except the house where he lived. 

There were two other letters; one from Julianna and 
one from her mother-in-law. She opened Julianna’s first. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


135 


It was fiercely upbraiding and full of accusations. Swiftly 
she skimmed its fifteen pages, for Judy said precisely the 
things people are supposed to say under the given circum¬ 
stances. She, at least, was true to type. Her common¬ 
place words contained nothing to be reckoned with. 
Madame Slater’s letter would be different. It also was 
long. Elizabeth decided not to open it till she was out 
on the hills. There was no letter or message from Arch 
and for this she counted herself thankful. But then she 
had expected none. 

Out in the early May sunshine, the two Elizabeths 
skirted the house and by climbing a winding path that 
led all but perpendicularly up, they came out on the 
top of a cliff that overlooked Harlech and the Straits of 
Menai. “See the world!” Lize cried with wonderment, as 
she flung herself, panting, down in a warm nest of sweet 
fern and heather. 

“It is a beautiful world,” Elizabeth said happily, as she 
seated herself on the edge of a rock and let her feet 
dangle over a thousand feet of space. It made her heart 
come up in her throat, but it tasted good. She dislodged 
a sea-worn stone and flung it forward, then she listened 
to it as it staccatoed down the rough mountainside, more 
and more faintly. Lize began a singsong, in quaint 
fashion, that meant she would soon be asleep. 

The soft sea air warmed by the spring sun blew gently 
over them and Lize slept. Elizabeth looked at the little 
brown creature lying free on the grey rock and hesitated, 
for she, too, would like to sleep out in the clear sunlight, 
on the top of the world, with the bright blue sky above 
and the heather-grown earth beneath. Instead, she drew 


136 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


her mother-in-law’s letter from her pocket and broke the 
seal, black, and with the family crest crisply outlined. It 
bore such an absurd motto, Elizabeth’s lips curled as she 
read it, Non flocci jacio. She imagined it had been 
bestowed mockingly upon some illiterate, haughty Slater 
of bygone days, a man of boorish aspect and disdainful 
mind who would have been quite as well or ill pleased 
with any other bestowal, one meaning quite as much to 
him as another. 

Madame Slater’s letter began as usual, “My dear 
Elizabeth.” Not wholly damned, Elizabeth thought as 
she spread the boldly written pages of her mother-in-law’s 
letter out on her knees. She read on, “You may imagine 
how shocked I was when Arch appeared at my house and 
in my room at two o’clock in the morning, gulping these 
words, ‘Mother, you were right. Elizabeth has left me.’ 
Naturally, I was very much relieved when he told me he 
had your address and I knew, in your departure, you were 
not wholly governed by temper or passion.” Elizabeth 
hurried on. “Arch is righteously indignant and puzzled, 
and unreasonable, which goes without saying, for when is 
poor Arch not unreasonable? He is hurt, too. How fond 
he is of you I cannot decide. In spite of his brutalities, 
he has a tender heart, don’t mistake that, exacting, jeal¬ 
ous, and as I just said, he is, I know, unreasonable. I 
know, also, it was not wholly unreasonable in you to leave 
him. You put up with his tempestuous nature so many 
years, I hoped, for the sake of the boys, you could hold 
out. More women than perhaps you realize do put up 
with harder natures than Archibald’s. Even many of 
your contemporaries, women of unsound, vagrant minds, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


137 


do this, though your generation and mine do not take the 
same attitude towards separation and divorce. 

“I am telling my friends that you have gone abroad for 
the summer and possibly for an even longer time. This 
gives you and my son ample opportunity to make any 
adjustment you may see fit to make. Personally, I shall 
be happy to welcome you home as if nothing had 
occurred. You have too good sense, I am confident, to be 
disturbed by Julianna’s too zealous letter. The silly child 
believes you have gone to London to join Archibald Sat- 
terlee. This is nonsense. I, who am more truly 
acquainted with your nature, which is essentially true, am 
assured you have done nothing so stupid. Undeniably, 
Mr. Satterlee is a man of great charm and wide social 
experience. Poor Kate had a sorry time as his wife, 
though when it came to the divorce I disapproved of her 
action. To be fair, I can imagine no greater punishment 
than being Kate’s husband. Her voice is enough to 
destroy the happiness of the angels in heaven. She is, 
moreover, of a jealous disposition. 

“Arch has closed the New York house and, with his 
three sons and Anne Preston, gone out to Wyoming to 
join Ledger Wigton, one of his classmates, who has taken 
a deep and, to me incomprehensible, interest in forestry. 
It is a sensible enough step on Arch’s part. New York 
was ruining him, molding him into a business machine. 
You and I fully agree on this point if I am not mistaken. 
Young Wigton, who needs assistance in Washington, 
wants him to go into politics. He says there is a great 
future in Wyoming for men of my son’s mental powers. 
What foolish speeches men make! There is room for 


138 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the best grade of anything, man or woolen cloth, in all 
places and at all times. But sometimes it may be neces¬ 
sary to change one’s environment to discover the open 
road and, yes, the grade. You who love the country 
might live happily with Arch in Wyoming, when you 
found New York unbearable. 

“My poor daughter, after the first ecstasy of freedom 
has passed, you will miss your three sons cruelly and, I 
can’t but believe, Archibald as well. For if you had not 
truly loved him, could you have trusted the children to 
him? 

“Lize, of course, will have to have a governess. I am 
well acquainted with a charming Boston girl who is pre¬ 
cisely the person you will like. Fortunately, she is now 
living in England. She is, by the way, an early flame 
of my son’s, Lucy Penrose. Arch may have told you 
about her. She and her mother were both educated at 
Three Bridges, the school where I entered your little 
Elizabeth and where I still hope you will send her. Like 
many other New England families, the Penroses lost their 
fortune by investments in railroad stocks. Lucy had 
no sooner adjusted herself to her altered circumstances 
than she met with a greater loss in the death of her 
mother. Ill-advised, she accepted a position as governess 
to an American family of no tradition and less humanity. 
Finding her position intolerable, she is now stranded in 
the Midlands in a small village near Litchfield.” 

Madame Slater’s letter then gave the family news 
calmly and exactly as usual and finally closed with an 
affectionate greeting for Lize and herself. There was 
something so just and so patient in her mother-in-law’s 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


139 


attitude, that it made Elizabeth weep a little. How ter¬ 
rible to accept one’s destiny as Madame Slater accepted 
hers, stoically, silently, glorying in her discipline, happy 
that she could bear without wincing! But how needlessly 
cruel! She could see nothing in such heroic sacrifice but 
wicked self-effacement. 

Elizabeth stared long at Moel Hebog, the mysterious, 
on whose rock-bound sides, high up in the mist, grew the 
white heather many travellers had lost their lives to 
gather. Aunt Fan, the all-wise, had been right about the 
nobler qualities of her mother-in-law. She had totally 
misunderstood her. For the first time, it appeared that 
the block of ice through which they had peered at each 
other blindly might melt, displaced by their tears. She 
had never loved her enough and now the time had passed 
when her love made any difference. Elizabeth let her feet 
slip a little further over the abyss, far enough to feel a 
queer, cool something creeping up her spine. The next 
moment she flung her back upon her past and looked 
toward the gorgeous free years ahead. 


CHAPTER II 


Elizabeth decided to write her book first and then to 
explore life. This decision meant the deliberate putting 
on of a heavy yoke, for there was no freedom in writing. 
It meant weeks running into months, and possibly a year 
or more of drudgery, but a drudgery of her own choosing 
and so endurable. 

Swift to carry out any plan she had once entered upon, 
she rented a small stone cottage not far from the church, 
converted it into a schoolhouse and made Lucy Penrose 
its mistress. Thus, quite simply, she arranged for Lize’s 
long mornings. At Lucy’s suggestion, she invited the 
children of the parson and of the two village physicians to 
join in Lize’s lessons. And through the parson Lucy met 
a family of Americans living out Port Madoc way. They 
had three charming little girls who also came to the 
school. Altogether, she had eleven pupils. 

It seemed quite wonderful to Elizabeth to be able once 
more to take the initiative. She could now do what she 
wanted to do and she could do it swiftly and to a neat 
completion, as she had been accustomed in her youth. 
One morning of letter-writing and telephoning brought 
to her the comforts and some of the luxuries of living; 
beautiful frocks for herself and Lize, furniture for Plas- 
tan-y-craig and the school, a basket cart and two shaggy 
ponies, a collie pup, a small car, books, two hundred or 
more, all sorts of potted things for tea and Lize’s 
luncheons, rugs, two typewriters, boxes of paper and corn- 
140 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


141 


forts of so many and varied kinds that Lucy, the calm, 
was obviously bewildered. 

“We may be here all winter, even longer,” Elizabeth 
explained, “that is, if my work goes well and you don’t 
tire of us.” 

“Bethgelert is the kind of place I never tire of,” Lucy 
assured Elizabeth. “I could live here the rest of my 
days. I love the mountains, and the solitudes, and the 
sensitive Welsh race. I hope I may succeed in estab¬ 
lishing a night school. The parish needs workers. I like 
the rector and I love to attend his strange but beautiful 
services.” 

“You go down Leaf Lane,” Elizabeth said sympa¬ 
thetically, “pass a yew tree that was old when Columbus 
discovered America, walk meekly between two rows of 
ancient headstones, and enter a grey church that has 
three long narrow lancet windows in the chancel, verily 
a church militant. And just beyond and quite visible 
through the glazing are the purple mountains and the 
rushing waters, part of which has crept into the service, 
into the rector’s voice, and into the music. Yes, I can 
understand why you love the church.” 

“I do,” Lucy said with decision. 

“But there is a bleakness?” 

“Which you have dispelled by a glowing luxury I never 
knew in my New England home.” 

“I wrote to Madame Slater something of this place and 
my plans for Lize. In my letter I told her I had indulged 
in one great and beautiful luxury; I meant you, of course. 
I wish I could bind you to me with bands of steel, you 
who are so wise and so patient. It is you who should be 


142 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the mother of Lize, for you could teach her to love the 
cardinal virtues. Trained by you she might even learn 
to dote on daily duties and drudgery and eternal 
dullness.” 

Elizabeth and Lucy were seated on a low bench beyond 
the hawthorne bush which was now dropping deep pink 
petals in a fairy ring on the grass beneath its evenly 
spreading branches. Here they came afternoons when it 
didn’t rain, to enjoy their tea and to worship the tree 
glowing with light and the purple slopes of Moel Hebog, 
not more than a mile away. 

“How could you bring yourself to leave Arch?” Lucy 
asked, shoving her tea abruptly away from her. “He is 
a dear chap.” 

Elizabeth successfully suppressed a shudder at the 
word chap, and looked gravely into Lucy’s face. “It was 
quite easy,” she said coolly. 

“You feel remorse; you feel remorse every day you 
live.” 

“Truly, I don’t. Do you know what it means to be 
checked and checked and checked; and when you make 
one free move to be again checked? But of course you 
do; every one knows who has any intelligence. My un¬ 
happiness had something to do with the utter unreason¬ 
ableness of life. It was a clutching, tearing, bursting in 
my heart, and now I am free.” 

“No one is free. I have been taught that when we 
cry for freedom we merely cry for license. A few great 
men dare to smash human laws. They can, for they take 
their commandments from God, and His burden is heavy. 
But obedience to law is not dull; it is the opposite. If we 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


143 


find it dull, it is because we have only played at 
obedience.” 

“Played! It’s a fairly close game, then. What beat 
me was why I should have to go on when I didn’t think 
it worth while; when I had plainly looked at it from 
every side and come to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth 
while. I said that I didn’t feel any remorse. It isn’t 
remorse exactly. I do feel that it is giving Arch an 
unfair deal. Only, with the three boys whom he adores, 
my going away doesn’t hurt him as much as you prob¬ 
ably imagine. 

“Sometimes,” Elizabeth continued after an interval, 
“I feel guilty, because I am happier now, more fully con¬ 
trolled. Is it a crime that I should feel happier now? 
I am glad I had the courage to run away. I hope I 
shall have the courage to live the rest of my life as my 
nature prompts me to live it, restricted by no ties or 
traditions, free as those great birds that are flying over 
our heads from horizon line to horizon line.” 

Lucy, who had on call a number of excellent maxims 
of the late Victorian obsession, hesitated to speak. What 
did Elizabeth know of the joy of renunciation or of the 
pure happiness that possesses man when he is obedient 
to law? Checking a desire to quote Wordsworth, she 
rose regrettfully from the bench, an exquisite creature in 
flawless primrose linens. Her pale, straw-colored hair 
which was combed flatly away from her forehead, was 
stabbed into place by a dozen sharp hair-pins, her Parian- 
clear complexion shone translucent and beautiful, while 
her grey-blue eyes reflected a gentleness of spirit Eliza¬ 
beth loved to see. She hoped the calm strength and 


144 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


sweetness of Lucy’s nature would have a beneficent 
influence over her tempestuous little daughter. 

“The birds you have been watching,” Lucy said, “look 
like the wild geese I sometimes saw flying north in the 
early spring in New England. They fly in the form of a 
V, their leader at the apex. I scarcely imagine these are 
the same birds,” she said speculatively, “but, somehow, 
they might be.” 


CHAPTER III 


Madame Slater’s house in the White Mountains stood 
empty till late into the summer. Purple asparagus tips 
shot up through the mellow earth and developed into 
green, feathery plumes, traps to catch the evening and 
the morning dews; six separate plantings of garden peas 
grew to a delicate maturity, turned a sickly white and 
died; rows of lettuce ruffled into round green balls and 
then, left to the fulfilment of their natural destiny, shot 
blossom shafts straight up into the sunlight from their 
white hearts. And every noonday and every night Guy 
said to his wife, “Oh, ain’t it awful, Maggie!” 

“Growin’ things for emptiness,” Maggie agreed, her 
pity stirred for the borders of primroses and pansies 
which had blossomed and gone to seed without the 
gracious approval of their mistress. 

Contrary to her fixed habit, Madame Slater had not 
gone north the twenty-fifth of May. Boston in July was 
annoyingly hot and yet she postponed her departure from 
fortnight to fortnight, held by her anxiety for her chil¬ 
dren. Their acts cut into her soul like knives. But she 
intended they should not even surmise this. So great a 
necessity was upon her to get instant news of them, she 
was quite unwilling to trust the delivery of their letters 
to the vagaries of a country post office. So she remained 
in town, simulating an interest in a new flower charity 
which she found a foolish enterprise, but a sufficiently ade¬ 
quate camouflage for her purpose. At any cost, she must 
145 


146 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


appear to the clan to be steadfast, reasonably happy, and 
unshaken in her belief in the final great issues of her own 
life and of theirs. 

The children’s letters Madame Slater rarely answered 
in the imposing mahogany library with its leviathan fur¬ 
nishings. Rather she chose for this delicate task, the 
cherry desk and ladder-back chair which had once been 
her mother’s and the quiet of her own bed-chamber, now 
slippery and white in its summer coverings. Here one 
hot July morning, her old serving maid, Agnes, brought 
her the mail. As the bent creature placed a tray heaped 
with letters on her mistress’ desk, it seemed as if she 
would burst with pride, for she had brought, she was 
aware, news from each of the clan; from Steven, and 
Archibald, and Julianna, and Anthony and from some of 
the married-ins and once-removeds, from Evelyn Fordyce 
and Polly Woodis and Elizabeth. 

When Madame Slater put down the last of the chil¬ 
dren’s letters her habitually calm face was white with 
fatigue and grief. She could scarcely meet intelligently 
all the demands laid upon her. Sometimes her sympathy 
failed, and sometimes her imagination, but less often her 
understanding. She trembled for the salvation of her 
sons; she wept for their sins, which were many. There 
was her eldest born, Steven. He needed a man’s advice. 
She would write to Archibald. Steven’s excursions into 
a cheap world of self-indulgence nauseated her. Now he 
was presenting an entirely new set of justifications for his 
abuse of his wife and his neglect of business. He had 
suffered all his life, he said, from his damned New Eng¬ 
land training which meant nothing but suppression. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


147 


Everything he had ever longed to do or to be had been 
checked as evil. There was a clever little Jew doctor 
from Vienna who had some sense in him. He alone of 
mortals realized that the result of self-sacrifice was far- 
reaching in the wrong way . . . damnable! But her 
eldest son was her eldest son, the head of the family of 
Slater. As such, he must be treated with respect and 
the present horrid entanglement, with whomever it hap¬ 
pened to be, must be righted. But how? 

Julianna’s letter was less distressing. Marriage suited 
Julianna. She was as fat as a pig and as strong as a 
horse. Her babies came as nature sent them. And 
really, as far as she could see into life, the only respect¬ 
able way for them to come. Unfortunately, Julianna, 
who had a limited imagination, was likely to lead a self- 
satisfied, uneventful, and frightfully tame, life. There 
was every prospect that she would remain permanently 
in love with her stupid husband and that eventually she 
would be absorbed by what Anthony called his numb- 
dumb mind. 

Even to Madame Slater’s critical attitude, Elizabeth’s 
letter seemed happy. Possibly, it was the wisest course 
to let the breach between her and Archibald widen; and 
possibly not! Her own judgment had been unerring in 
regard to Lucy Penrose. With her steady and entirely 
honest nature, she need feel no serious anxiety for Lize. 
Lucy liked both Elizabeth and Lize; she liked Wales; she 
liked her work. 

Archibald wrote enthusiastically of Wyoming. He and 
Ledger Wigton were in danger of forgetting that there 
were any other interests in the world comparable to the 


148 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


preservation of forest trees. To what she had written 
him about Elizabeth, he made no reference. The boys 
were learning to ride their raw ponies in good form. 
Already they had developed a fair amount of muscle. 
Anne Preston remained faithful. Ridiculous as it must 
seem to anyone who knew the prim Anne in the old days, 
he saw a suitor for her looming on the horizon. But Anne 
had changed. She was more assertive and she wore some¬ 
thing red around her waist. 

Archibald’s letter left a furrow on Madame Slater’s 
brow. It was, she felt, a filial letter, written to appease 
a mother’s anxieties. She admitted to herself frankly 
that she failed to understand her second son. Was 
he as interested in forestry as he pretended to be? As 
far as she knew the family annals, it wasn’t on record 
that a Slater had ever bent his energies to the mastery 
of any of the natural sciences. One of Archibald’s great- 
uncles had made a collection of birds’ nests and written 
a book about them, but he had been injured in the battle 
of New Orleans and was considered the family idiot. 
She held his name a blemish on the superb list of clergy¬ 
men, lawyers, and statesmen of the Slater race. And 
now, her sons chose to do queer things. Steven’s last 
venture had been corsets; and Archibald, who wrote 
essays and published exquisite editions of the Elizabethan 
dramatists, for one must live, had begun to fell trees. 

Now was the time for Arch to miss Elizabeth if he were 
ever going to miss her. But did he miss his wife; had he 
made any advance toward a reconciliation; and was he 
obtuse to the fact that the little boys needed their 
mother? Steven openly accused her of thinking in plati- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


149 


tudes. It seemed to her that Steven’s generation didn’t 
think at all. Elizabeth belligerently declared Words¬ 
worth’s Ode to Duty to be wicked and his Ode to Immor¬ 
tality balderdash and negligible except for its undoubted 
style which gave it a certain literary value. She held 
there was no such thing as individual morality. And yet 
for ten years Elizabeth had performed with exemplary 
patience and fortitude her uttermost duty to Arch and to 
her children. 

Anthony, her youngest and frailest, had also sent her 
a letter, but short and careless in accordance with his 
years. He was in London and apparently working. But 
he seemed to be flannying about nights with Archibald 
Satterlee. Plainly he, also, was in need of solid counsel. 
Her second son must write to his two brothers. Must? 

Madame Slater divided her letters into two bunches; 
those that could be answered immediately and those she 
held wisest to sleep over. For a moment, she considered 
sending Archibald’s letter to Elizabeth, but decided it 
was unfair to expose her son in so colorless a light. Juli¬ 
anna, who consistently adored the entire clan, would 
enjoy anything that her brother wrote and so his letter 
might go to her. Very probably she would say it was 
simply ripping and that she was intrigued by its con¬ 
tents, merely to prove her modernity. Intrigued! Her 
slip-shod daughter was scarcely modern. A memory of 
Julianna as she last saw her in her own home filled 
Madame Slater with despair. She decided to order for 
her a couple of dozen stockings, a long coat and a hat or 
two from Hollander’s. Also, she needed petticoats. 

Julianna once off her mind, Madame Slater realized the 


150 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


morning was insufferably hot. She pushed a small but¬ 
ton and Agnes brought her a glass of cooled water. Then 
she powdered her tapering white arms with oris root and 
began a letter to Elizabeth. Possibly, she might ask 
Elizabeth to invite Anthony to make her a visit. They 
had seemed to understand and to like each other. Her 
strong chin trembled as she let her thoughts dwell upon 
her youngest son, the most charming of her children and 
the most wavering. Her eyes fixed indifferently on a 
hornet which crawled delicately over her arms, evidently 
lured on by the delicate perfume of the oris powder and 
in search of the honey dew its fragrance suggested. Intel¬ 
lectually, she had taken the high ground that Elizabeth 
could do no wrong; but she had never been able to decide 
whether in her inmost soul she trusted her. And now 
that the problem of Anthony’s future loomed insoluble, 
she found to her astonishment that she would be quite 
satisfied to have him renew his friendship with her 
daughter-in-law. 

With a sigh repressed only in part, Madame Slater 
finally picked up a book written by an ardent disciple of 
the little Jew doctor, once of Vienna, but now dead, and 
began to study a subject about which she decided it was 
wise to be more thoroughly informed, if she were to meet 
her children on their ground—the only common ground 
possible, since they would never meet her on hers. With 
a flush of anger, she turned from a chapter on onanism to 
one which treated seriously the subject of dreams and 
symbols. In dreams, a house always represents a 
human person; parents are kings and queens; brothers 
and sisters are little animals or vermin; birth is repre¬ 
sented by running water. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


151 


“Nonsense, arrant nonsense,” Madame Slater kept 
grumbling below her breath, as she read stoically on. 
After a while, she came to the story of a young man with 
blue eyes and blue hatbands who loved his mother and 
the color blue. He was psychoanalyzed and his obsession 
for blue was traced back to blue crosses on hens’ eggs, put 
there by his mother for thrifty reasons totally irrelevant 
to the world in which Madame Slater lived. But the 
problem was carried further till the young man’s passion 
for blue was attributed to sex jealousy of his loved 
parent. 

Still Madame Slater read on, a Spartan mother pre¬ 
pared to suffer any amount of spiritual nausea if, by so 
suffering, she might in any slight degree comprehend the 
coming generation, of which she admitted to herself she 
knew nothing. 

















Part IV 


INTERLUDES 








CHAPTER I 


Elizabeth, who had been the cause of so much trouble 
to the Slater clan, woke each morning with joy clutching 
her throat. She did not attempt to do any writing. It 
seemed senseless to let the walls of the stone-house cut 
her off from the sun and the purple meadows. And so 
she spent long days wandering over the mountain valleys 
with Lize and Lucy Penrose, forgetful of the past and 
wholly unconscious of the garden tragedies that bit so 
cruelly into old Guy’s soul, or of the disastrous intersec¬ 
tion her departure had made in Madame Slater’s complex. 

Finally Anthony came for a week. With him, Eliza¬ 
beth climbed Snowdon, spent one glorious day in Harlech 
and still another on Moel Hebog. Anthony, who also 
seemed to have forgotten the past, talked much of Archi¬ 
bald Satterlee and his queer friends and exaggerated 
inconsistencies. 

Archibald had turned Catholic, and with a childlike 
faith that set grotesquely on his Boston manner, he asked 
anyone he happened to come across to pray for him. He 
had burned himself out. The distorted remnant of him 
was like the shards of a beech tree which had been caught 
but not consumed by a forest fire. Poor devil! He had 
drained his cup too eagerly, slopping the wine. For 
months, he entertained harsh-voiced chorus girls, endur¬ 
ing their awful shrieks for some inexplicable reason, and 
then, suddenly, he’d give himself over to hashish or some 
other deadly drug, now so difficult to obtain. He told 
155 


156 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


strange tales of his dreams and illusions and he saw the 
issue of his madness not as a decadent might see it, with 
a certain reverence for the senses, but as a Yankee- 
Puritan, conscious of sin. So at least Anthony summed 
him up. 

As she listened, Elizabeth felt her interest in her old 
lover begin once more to dominate her imagination. With 
slight encouragement, Anthony held to this one topic, 
for Satterlee had fascination for him also. Of his 
acquaintances, he alone had the daring to live his desires. 
Elizabeth, having been in her girlhood an ardent Freu¬ 
dian, had grown up with a frightening conviction that 
sometime in her life she would be overwhelmed by sex- 
urge, that dynamic force which so largely controls human 
destiny, and that very likely she would be driven by 
insane jealousy to dreadful commitments. She had felt 
an interest in the passions that lay dormant in her sup¬ 
pressed self and disappointed that they had never burst 
their barriers. The one overmastering impulse she had 
known was the impulse for freedom and this had finally 
driven her gloriously forth into a new world. 

Outside this, reason had governed her life. She saw 
behind her years of sensible, dutiful drudgery. It had 
been impossible for her to pass beyond inherited tradi¬ 
tions, a hatred of wasted energy, a natural distaste for 
violence, a shrinking away from passion in the raw, laxity 
of any kind. She began to suspect that between her 
and experience there lay a chasm she would never 
venture to jump. She could not, even in her most daring 
mood, try hashish. 

And yet, it was never quite out of Elizabeth’s con- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


157 


sciousness that London and Archibald Satterlee were 
within a few hours of where she lived. Renewing the old 
ties was one of the things that lay within the happy pos¬ 
sibilities of the future. 


CHAPTER II 


Late September, when the purple days were tipped at 
each end with gold, and the sea birds and the land birds 
flew south in quarrelsome flocks, Elizabeth sat long on 
the rock above her house and wept. “Life is crucifixion,” 
she said. “We are born to torture and to be tortured. 
The glory escapes.” 

To break away from smothering pain and an insidious 
habit of idling which she suspected was its cause, Eliza¬ 
beth journeyed down to London for a fortnight. She was 
alone, for Lucy Penrose’s school was in full swing and 
Lize had already steadied to her work. Once in town 
and in the brooding hotel where she had passed a solitary 
girlhood in the environment of her mother, Elizabeth’s 
mind centered on the past. Especially she thought about 
her mother against whose naughty ways Aunt Fan’s 
daughters-in-law had warned her. For her mother had 
played around too conspicuously with a hilarious set of 
smart Londoners and she had had in her wake too many 
soldiers of fortune, and she had done many things which 
she ought not to have done. The soldiers of fortune 
Elizabeth remembered well enough. They were mostly 
red-faced men with good-natured ways and dormouse 
minds. The hotel where her mother chose to live, the 
aunts said, had been built for peacocks; a place for 
resplendent birds to preen themselves and spread their 
glittering tails. Elizabeth knew better than they how 
gaily her gorgeous mother had trailed along her chosen 
158 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


159 


way of gilt and damask and exotic perfumes and music 
and light. And if the aunts had led virtuous and indus¬ 
trious lives, they had grown to be gloomy old women, 
while her mother had flanneyed about with a laughing 
face. There was some virtue in laughter, she thought. 

Within reason, Elizabeth had been free. Safeguarded 
by a respectable English governess and a highly trained 
tutor who was automatic and inevitable, she had man¬ 
aged in spite of gashing interruptions to matriculate for 
Nenham at a villainously early age. In those days, she 
now saw, she had been a tethered lamb. Though there 
had been violence in her soul when her mother cut out 
Nenham, she had bleated her despair ineffectually and, 
under the guidance of the automaton, continued nibbling 
at the classics. Truly her shepherd carried no pipes of 
Pan. But she had had her pride; that had been her 
trouble; that was why she had ambled and worn a 
blue bow and lapped milk. 

Once, when something had gone conspicuously wrong 
with Mrs. Duncan’s permanent wave, and she had taken 
that occasion to renew her skin, they had spent four 
glorious months together in North Wales and Elizabeth 
had found her frivolous mother a delightful person. 
Heavens! What a prig she had been! And still was! 
But Elizabeth had rarely met any of her mother’s un¬ 
speakable friends or seen her distinguished cousins or 
even caught a glimpse of the Honourable Gwendolyn 
Tawney, who had an inordinate passion for French boots 
and dwarfed poodles and whose immense fortune was des¬ 
tined to play so tiresome a part in her own life. 

Elizabeth’s imagination shot back into the dark; but 


160 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


did it hit the truth? Mother and daughter—daughter 
and mother. What a difficult relationship to maintain! 
She thought of Lize and winced. Never would she clamp 
Lize to the iron convention of perfect understanding, 
where love too often is demanded as a right and the dry¬ 
ing up of the fountains of adoration held damnable. 

For the two weeks in London Elizabeth determined to 
live lavishly as her mother had lived, overleaping the 
sumptuary laws to which she was nicely obedient and fol¬ 
lowing as closely as she could the reprehensible ways of 
the past. She rented a Pekingese lap-dog, a grand piano, 
and a purple limousine with livery, for so had her mother 
done before her. She bought hats and frocks of a giddi¬ 
ness likely to satisfy even the most flamboyant taste and 
she ordered a daily supply of flowers and sweets which 
she never remembered to open. Finally, she had sent her 
a box of the latest novels and plays, written in three 
tongues, for like her mother she was a good linguist. By 
noon of the second day, she had equipped her apartment 
and herself with an exotic brightness that satisfied her 
desires. Partly it had been a work of art and partly 
it had been a tribute to an early memory. After lunch 
she ordered the grand limousine to take her to the Na¬ 
tional Portrait Gallery, a deviation, she feared, from the 
elegant. Then she remembered Anthony and invited him 
to dinner. As her hand flopped over the leaves of the 
telephone book, she considered the possibility of asking 
Archibald Satterlee also, but a something senseless and 
shy would not let her do so. 

As Elizabeth sat in the limousine with the cross little 
Pekingese in her lap, she felt herself posing graciously as 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


161 


she had seen her mother pose. She was very much 
pleased with her own distinguished appearance. It was 
exciting to feel herself frocked stunningly, not as Rachel 
would frock her with exquisite reserve, but boldly with 
a provocative dash to every curve and twist in her cos¬ 
tume. What she wore were not her real clothes. It was 
as if her very soul had changed. She had never felt 
beautiful before. It was a wonderful sensation. She 
remembered the thrilled triumphant expression in her 
mother’s face when she turned away from the mirror and 
the way she turned her head when shaded by a dashing 
black hat very like the Gainsborough she herself was 
wearing. Elizabeth turned her head, with a tilt to her 
chin followed by a swift, modest, downward bend that 
disclaimed arrogance. Disclaimed? Was that the way 
women really felt when they cast their eyes downward? 
Proud as the devil and—devilish? She practiced the pose 
again, and on the upward curve her eyes saw the National 
Portrait Gallery looming grey and sombre. It was the 
place she had last visited when she was in London and 
she had promised herself it was the first place she would 
visit when next she returned to the stone city. Here it 
was flinging down its gauntlet, an eternal challenge to her 
understanding and sympathy. To know people: that 
meant to know life. In the portrait gallery she could 
stare and stare at human faces without offence. There 
she saw at least the artist’s judgment on men and charac¬ 
ter and sometimes the artist told even more than he saw. 
This was true at least of the earlier painters who worked 
with a patience and directness denied the more self- 
conscious modern schools. 


162 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth stopped behind a short-set man and an 
easel. “That is a splendid copy,” she said with surprise. 

“Thank you,” the man’s voice twanged angrily. 

“American?” 

“Of German descent.” 

“German-American, with a hyphen?” 

“Quite so!” 

“You paint to order?” 

“Permit me, madame, to present my card.” 

The copyist fumbled in his pocket, then faced Eliza¬ 
beth. Instantly he became embarrassed and obsequiously 
polite. A silly smile spread across his rather serious face, 
destroying his natural dignity and not wholly bad looks. 
“Ah,—madame,” he repeated in a soft voice. 

But Elizabeth hurried on. So that was what gorgeous 
clothes did for one; made one a mark for what destroyed 
the natural comradeship with one’s kind, which she had 
always enjoyed, and gave one in its place something for 
which she had an instinctive aversion, something false 
and mid-Victorian and silly. 

That night, when Elizabeth made ready for the little 
dinner with Anthony, she decided to be for the occasion 
just Elizabeth. 

Elizabeth could not sleep in London. A something, 
which she called mob-consciousness, kept her awake. 
The fact that Archibald Satterlee might come to see her 
at any time, made her restless. She was too far away 
from Lize. Anthony looked too much like his brother not 
to bring back the past with torturing vividness. She 
missed Moel Hebog and his steadying silence. Life 
moved too feverishly forward. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


163 


Rummaging in the curious Welsh library, at Plas-tan- 
y-craig Lize had found a tattered guide book to Kew 
Gardens from which she had read to her mother curious 
extracts. “ ‘No more delightful day’s pleasure can be 
enjoyed in the neighborhood of the Metropolis, than 
which is afforded by a holiday at Kew. . . .For who does 
not love to look upon the productions of the earth and 
see with delight the floral treasures which in all the hues 
of the rainbow enamel the gardens and fill the air with 
fragrance? . . . The cloak room, where ladies may wish 
to deposit their cloaks,’ ” Lize’s soft little voice trickled 
on, “ ‘and their clogs and umbrellas. . . . The Temperate 
Fernery . . . The Succulent House . . . The Orchidious 
House.’ But Mother, listen to this,” Lize had insisted. 
“ ‘Immediately facing you is an unpretentious, roomy, 
commodious greenhouse in which are to be seen all kinds 
of the lilies that are rocked on the silver streams of India 
and that rest placidly on the calm creeks of tropical 
America. Here, above all is to be found the won-der-ful 
plant of quiet taste, the great water lily, the Victoria 
Regalis, each like an enormous green dish on the surface 
of the water, large enough to support a child. . . . Leav¬ 
ing this spot we proceed on to . . .’ ” 

Elizabeth and Lize both longed to see the Victoria 
Regalis; Elizabeth because it had been a thwarted dream 
of her youth, Kew Gardens having been denied her, and 
Lize because she hoped to find something new to stride. 
The Victoria Regalis w r as at least a pleasant reason for an 
excursion to Kew, for if the lily still grew there, Lize 
should visit the gardens with Lucy Penrose in the spring 
and have her passionate wish granted. 


164 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


When, after a volatile, disintegrating day of nothings, 
Elizabeth drove down Richmond Road, she entered the 
Gardens somewhere near the Temple of Midden, passed 
the Temperate House and found herself in a playground 
of a great city. There was music not far away, and 
children dancing, and wretched old women and all sorts 
of misery warming itself in the late September sun. She 
made friends with a young girl who was weeping her 
heart out because she had loved her young man more 
than he had loved her. He wasn’t much of a brag, she 
told Elizabeth, just a sawed off, but some girls didn’t get 
any. To the crooked old women whose habits of beggary 
were so fixed there was no chance of reform, Elizabeth 
gave shillings. It seemed to her that the sordid old of 
London were the most degraded lot in the world. They 
had no hope, no gaiety, no bravery; they had lost their 
pride. And to all the red-headed children she came 
across, she gave pennies, in accordance with her custom, 
as a mild compensation for their temper-ridden souls. As 
she walked along, not as completely in sympathy with 
the mob as she would have chosen to be, a sense of 
desolation and utter loneliness clutched her. She wanted 
to belong to someone, to have someone nearby who was 
wholly hers. A man of quality was walking leisurely 
down a path leading to the Pinetum, she imagined. She 
wished he were her father. She had never had a father. 
He paused to take a respectable silver watch out of his 
respectable waistcoat. “What time is it?” Elizabeth 
asked, stopping his slow progress. 

“It would be four o’clock.” 

“Have you many children?” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


165 


“Bless my boots, yes,” the man answered gaily. “Six 
obstreperous boys, just young enough to escape the war, 
and one slip of girl about your size.” 

“Married?” 

“A girl, I said.” 

“My word! I have three sons and one daughter.” 

“Bless me!” the man ejaculated, fixing disbelieving 
eyes on Elizabeth’s crystalline face. “I’ll be jiggered! 
It’s the truth you are telling me!” 

“Oh my stars and garters!” Elizabeth giggled. 

The respectable man emitted a loud guffaw. 

“I knew you were Irish,” Elizabeth continued. “I was 
just wishing you were my father.” 

“I’d own you for my youngest.” 

“It’s no use,” Elizabeth sighed, “I am in Wales.” 

“In Wales, are you!” Again the man laughed. 

“They tell me my father used to bang around queer 
city streets, clad in weathered tweeds and a gallant smile 
and when I saw you-” 

“In rags!” 

“In darns!” 

Again they both laughed and Elizabeth, who was late, 
shot along her way, happy that just for one dab of 
eternity she had been, not Elizabeth Duncan Slater, but 
a part of the throbbing humanity which thronged London 
streets. But just as she came to the entrance, she 
plunged into a filthy, tattered man with a matted beard 
and a thousand smells. He caught her in his arms to 
keep her from falling. The next minute, she was on the 
street and in the purple limousine. She felt as if she 
never could be clean again; she thought of all the horrid 



166 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


diseases she might have caught, leprosy, fever, tubercu¬ 
losis, smallpox. Only a Turkish bath could save her 
from immediate death. If she had enough money left she 
would go immediately to Cleopatra’s Private Swimming 
Pool. Having opened her bag which was singularly light, 
she found it empty. She counted over the things it had 
contained, her purse, of course, Aunt Fan’s gold watch, 
her own rings, which she had removed with her gloves in 
a spirit of democracy, a string of coral beads and the new 
contract with her publisher. Then she counted over the 
people she had been in contact with and speculated with 
some reserve concerning mob instinct. 

When Elizabeth finally returned to her hotel she found 
the calling card of Archibald Satterlee on her desk. Her 
heart missed a beat, thumped thickly forward, and again 
missed. Elizabeth slipped swiftly onto a chair. It was 
unpleasant to feel herself so shaken. Why, after eleven 
years, should she feel so shaken? She longed to see 
Satterlee so much that unaccountably she began to cry. 
It seemed to her that she would die if she could not 
see him that very hour. She still felt that way, some¬ 
times, about Aunt Fan. But Elizabeth was not inclined to 
exaggerate her emotions. She wished hers were extinct, 
at least the primordial passions of love and hate and scorn 
and desire, for they were the wild beasts that cut her off 
from quieter happiness and contentment such as Lucy 
Penrose seemed to possess. 

Across the Thames, lights from a million humble 
homes shone steadily forth. How strange to have been 
born on the other side, where passion was accepted as 
the ruling force of life; passion and hunger and jealousy. 


CHAPTER III 


After all, Elizabeth’s first meeting with Satterlee was 
without accent. It was at dinner. She entertained him 
along with Anthony in her own small dining-room, 
where the hum of the city and the wild music of the great 
caravansary was a mere cadence; an undercurrent of 
things said, a minor note that somehow made a sombre 
difference with one’s thoughts. 

Satterlee had a laugh now that was half grin, the 
sparkle gone out of it. His face was grey and he wore 
a clipped mustache. Somberly, Elizabeth admitted she 
would have found him more attractive if his hands had 
not trembled, if his face had been less equivocally lined. 

They both talked more easily to Anthony than they did 
to each other; they both were shy. The dinner, withal, 
was too long, too punctiliously served, too epicurean to be 
desirable. Satterlee, however, spoke of certain dishes 
with the air of a connoisseur, and he praised his hostess 
for her successful orderings. 

“If you say it is good, I suppose it is good,” Elizabeth 
said with crude indifference. “When food is clean and 
hot, I think nothing more about it.” 

“That sounds like home, our Boston,” Anthony snick¬ 
ered. 

“A damned Puritanical hole! And you, Elizabeth,” 
Satterlee said, fixing hard eyes on his hostess, “have 
caught the contamination. But after ten years a Slater, 
I must not be too exacting.” 

167 


168 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Offended, Elizabeth rose instantly to her feet and the 
two men followed. The three of them with restraint full 
upon them, passed into the drawing room, where Eliza¬ 
beth poured an exquisite blend of Mocha and Maracaibo 
into delicate gold-lined cups, while Anthony poked the 
fire. 

“I see you are still a little Puritan, when it comes to 
smoking,” Satterlee continued with persistent stupidity. 

“No, just deficient.” 

As she sipped her bitter coffee, Elizabeth looked from 
Satterlee to Anthony and back again to Satterlee, who 
had seated himself in the shadow. Since she had last 
seen him he had developed from a genius into a man of 
genius. The process had shattered his soul, for he had 
had the vision without the valor. Maybe, he had shifted 
his gears too often, running now in high speed and now in 
low, but ending in a safe second. If he had had the iron 
grip of her husband or if her husband had had his swift 
prescience, either man would have done with his life 
what he most passionately wanted. The gods were unfair 
in their allotments of power and weakness. 

Hurt by the wreckage she saw in Satterlee’s face, 
Elizabeth crossed the room to the piano and pounded her 
wrath into the keyboard. Then she remembered her 
guests and played Chopin for Anthony and Beethoven 
for both men. Then she forgot them and plunged again 
into a wild Slavic dance she had heard in Kew Gardens. 

“Elizabeth, Elizabeth, stop that music. I can’t bear 
it,” Anthony’s voice creaked. The boy spun around in 
his track as a pursued animal spins, then bolted from the 
room. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


169 


Elizabeth flashed after him, her heart in panic. But 
Anthony was too swift for her. She stopped helplessly in 
the center of the room, her eyes fixed attentively on Sat- 
terlee’s face. 

Satterlee, who had now come close to Elizabeth, said in 
his most impressive manner, “Elizabeth, I thought you 
beautiful as a girl. I was mistaken, not knowing what 
beauty is. I should have saved that word for you now. 
You are the most beautiful woman I have ever known.” 

“What is the matter with Anthony?” Elizabeth asked, 
displeased with the elaborate flattery. “Anthony is in 
trouble.” 

“Debts, I imagine,” Satterlee explained impatiently. 

“Debts, perhaps; but something worse than debts. He 
may be waiting for you below. Don’t you think-” 

“Of course.” 

Elizabeth watched him turn to leave the room, her 
chin slightly tilted as she had tilted it when wearing the 
Gainsborough. Satterlee’s face changed slightly as if he 
were pleased, and when she let her eyes droop modestly 
for a second a quizzical smile broke his face up into funny 
little lines that pointed the way to gaiety and laughter. 

After he had gone, Elizabeth walked swiftly about the 
room happy at heart. For now at last, after years of 
torture and doubt, she found the last entangling tradi¬ 
tion of her girlhood broken up, smashed, done for. She 
was free, free, free; free to live, free to act, free to think; 
bound to no one, bound by no one. The residue of her 
life. . . . 

But was she free? The memory of Aunt Fan and her 
solemn teachings coursed croakingly through her mind. 



170 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


There was Anthony. She couldn’t leave Anthony to be 
destroyed. But after he was put right, she would never 
again, as long as she lived, bind herself to senseless duty, 
or make for herself new obligations. She had been dal¬ 
lying about London for what? A sight of Archibald Sat- 
terlee. Slave to a vain memory! 


CHAPTER IV 


Elizabeth ate her breakfasts at the wan and sober hour 
of seven, but she ate them in bed as, in the past, her 
mother had eaten hers. By preference, she ordered coffee 
and toast and orange marmalade. There was to be 
gained by this sameness comfort and a low kind of 
serenity, for in England such breakfasting, like breath¬ 
ing, easily became a fixed and unconscious habit. She 
took in two morning papers and had her mail brought to 
her at the same time. In spite of these lollipops of 
British convention, she longed to tub and get out into 
the open, and when, after a broken dalliance, she finally 
passed down the glittering halls of the too-grand hotel, 
she silently apologized to the memory of her mother, to 
the still coatless flunkies and to the world at large. 

The morning following her small dinner party, Eliza¬ 
beth speedily chevied through the paraphernalia of living 
and was out in her purple limousine, speeding for the real 
city and the jolly hullabaloo of life she found there. 
Anthony, she imagined, was already at work, doing 
mechanical drawings for the fifrn of Beardsley, Page & 
Clewett, who had given him the job of designing a ceiling 
for Lord Somebody’s new dining room. It was to have 
Tudor roses cut in stone and set in lacunaria. Such a 
ceiling could belong only to a room of magnificent pro¬ 
portions. Evidently the work intrusted to him was of 
no little importance. Elizabeth was happy in the thought 
171 


172 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


that his ability was already being recognized. But as she 
drove along the thronged streets a doubt of his being 
already at work obsessed her. 

Elizabeth called through the speaking tube with the 
silver mouthpiece to her idle footman. “Stop at the 
nearest telephone pay station!” she commanded in a 
panic of anxiety. Not being able to hear her own voice 
as it shrilled upward, in the midst of the tearing street 
noises, she was surprised to find herself instantly obeyed. 

But Anthony was not in his rooms, a hardened 
telephone voice asseverated in automatic reiterations. 
Neither was he at Beardsley, Page & Clewett. It took 
twenty minutes to be certain on this point. Conquering 
her reluctance, Elizabeth then telephoned to Archibald 
Satterlee. Mr. Satterlee was still in bed; however she 
could be connected up. Finally a lazy voice answered 
her, from the depths of soft pillows she imagined. “What 
in hell do you want? Damn you, whoever you are.” 

“I object to being damned. You see I am just begin¬ 
ning to believe in a devil.” 

“Dear lady. Elizabeth. Lize.” 

“Do you know where Anthony is?” 

“Hell, no! I say, Lize-” 

“Thanks!” 

Elizabeth rang off swiftly, for it seemed almost 
indecent to talk to Satterlee between naps. 

In spite of her telephone digressions, Elizabeth kept an 
early morning appointment with Mr. Barthrup, her law¬ 
yer, a kindly man with a quick understanding. Eliza¬ 
beth believed that if she wanted to take the necessary 
steps to free Arch from his legal obligation to her, she 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


173 


could consult Mr. Barthrup without embarrassment or 
pain. He was stern enough to be a contemporary of 
Aunt Fan’s. 

So far, the lawyer knew more about Elizabeth’s prop¬ 
erty, for which he felt a natural human respect, than 
about her personal life. Her affairs had been intrusted to 
him by Trivett & Trivett, a New York firm which had 
given him several desirable clients. He admired her 
gaiety of spirit, her tempestuous nature held evenly in 
check, her beauty, and because essentially he was a prac¬ 
tical man, he admired the swift accurate way she dis¬ 
patched her business. 

“What glorious delphiniums!” Elizabeth cried as she 
entered his inner office, “and in September. Did you 
grow them?” 

“From seed, yes. Sometimes they reach a height of 
eight feet. Delphiniums are placey, you may not know. 
Once find the right spot and with a little careful handling 
they will flourish from generation unto generation.” 

“I am glad you have found I have a clear title to the 
Harlech property,” Elizabeth said, dreaming ahead to 
future plantings of evergreen and delphiniums and 
auratrum lilies. “You may tell the land agent I have 
decided not to sell. And now will you please look up my 
English cousins for me?” she continued as she sat down 
on the edge of a fiddle-back chair, many sizes too high for 
her. “I have a family of them, once removed, down in 
Devon. Somehow Mother let them slip, though she 
visited the Devizes’ branch. Mother used to say the 
Devon people were stodgy and poor. I have brought a 
memorandum of facts concerning them—all that I can 


174 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


remember. But, of course, our real business today is the 
income tax. Couldn’t you do that for me?” 

“As you are an alien the tax is, I might say, compli¬ 
cated. There are papers to be signed.” 

Elizabeth sighed: she sighed so profoundly that Mr. 
Barthrup threw back his head and gave a big laugh, as 
if he saw some delicious joke worth enjoying and as if, 
too, jokes did not come his way too often. He had firm 
white teeth, large, but beautifully even, and brilliant 
grey eyes. Elizabeth liked him very much. 

“But there are so many papers to be read through,” 
she explained. “One reads before one signs, doesn’t 
one?” 

“If I may trouble you we will sit at the table by the 
window,” Mr. Barthrup said with a return to his inev¬ 
itable tone. 

Elizabeth took a pen in her hand, twisted it, uncon¬ 
scious of what she was doing, till it snapped, and then 
laying her two hands on the desk before her said, “I have 
another more important piece of business, first.” Then 
she explained Anthony. “He is tremendously fine,” she 
finally said, “only he is accustomed to—to having his own 
way and he is high strung and high tempered, perhaps. 
I am frightened, for he couldn’t skulk or do anything to 
make him hide. He has just slipped the leash—the 
hateful leash we call civilization.” 

“Which he thinks barbarous.” 

“Which is barbarous when it makes a man scuttle like 
a scared rabbit, because he happens to owe money. Mr. 
Slater knows Dicken’s London better than he knows this 
chaotic, after-the-Great-War London. He is so queer, he 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


175 


may be afraid of debtor’s prison, or something equally 
mid-Victorian.” 

“And so prehistoric!” 

“Now the best thing for us to do,” Mr. Barthrup con¬ 
tinued, after a pause of no slight duration, “is to engage 
a detective to look him up—not dog his footsteps or cause 
him any annoyance, but find out if he is starving or in 
trouble of any kind.” 

Elizabeth, who knew the queer, harmless things that 
Anthony’s erratic nature might lead him into, inclined to 
wait a day or two to see if he wouldn’t turn up. But 
Barthrup took a more serious view of his disappearance 
than she had anticipated and so she left to him the quest 
of her brother-in-law. 


CHAPTER V 


Many times during the next few days, Elizabeth was 
on'the point of cabling to Madame Slater or to Arch, but 
Mr. Barthrup advised her to hold out as there was 
nothing in the situation that indicated tragedy. Of 
Madame Slater’s children, Arch, at least, had been care¬ 
fully trained to keep the family informed of his where¬ 
abouts, and so had Elizabeth been trained and all other 
civilized peoples, she supposed. Even her mother, who 
floated from place to place, punctiliously sent her address 
to her banker and her lawyer and to the flotsam and 
jetsam of English aristocracy with whom she bravely 
associated. 

But Anthony played a lone hand. He lived a solitary 
life, accounting to no one for his daily rounds. Eliza¬ 
beth told over a thousand idiotic adventures he might 
undertake without it once occurring to him he was in any 
way eccentric or even unconventional. Desire to see 
in situ an unusual lintel or a carved architrave might 
drive him to the world’s end. He might be on his way 
now to Paris, or Madrid, or Hongkong, or Vladivostok. 
However, Elizabeth argued, he was too short of funds to 
carry through any such project. Also, Anthony had a 
habit of night wandering. Even when a boy he used to 
sleep out on the hills, Arch conniving at his escape from 
sheets and respectability. She remembered how Arch’s 
voice had choked and then hardened when Anthony was 
176 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


177 


in trouble, for his younger brother was one of the few 
people he had truly loved. But rambling in certain pre¬ 
cincts of London, especially after dark, was fraught with 
perils greater than Mount Washington or any of the 
lesser Presidential Range had to offer. 

Following some delay the plain-clothes man reported to 
Mr. Barthrup that a man very similar to the American 
and probably Anthony Slater, was in the habit of going 
in the early evening down to the city and of walking 
along or near the Thames, till by devious routes he halted 
near the Tower. There, somehow, he escaped their track¬ 
ings. They needed more time. 

For six crippling days, Elizabeth sat in her room and 
waited, till the suspense was intolerable. She let her 
mind dwell too constantly on Madame Slater and on 
Arch, poor, smothered-in Arch! Had she made a mistake 
in not cabling? Then Mr. Barthrup telephoned her there 
was one more dew, the man who walked along the 
Thames having proved to be an innocuous poet. He 
advised her to do nothing precipitate—to wait. That 
was what life eternally demanded of her; to wait. In an 
attempt to occupy her mind, she ordered hand-knit 
sweaters for her little daughter with stockings to match, 
also hand-knit. She was very fussy about the gay 
colors she chose and the soft Saxony and camel’s hair of 
which they were to be made and all the time she won¬ 
dered if she could induce her to wear wool, for, like 
herself, Lize was hot-blooded. But Madame Slater was 
eternally warning her that—what were her words?—that 
she considered Elizabeth insufficiently clad, like an 
asylum child. 


178 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


When at last the torture of uncertainty began to 
destroy her steadiness of purpose, to make her hands 
tremble and her mind run wide, she wrote out a message 
to Arch, struggling to make it as plain as the English 
language permitted and the cable could transmit. Down 
on paper, the facts shouted back to her unreality—pre¬ 
posterous unreality. They couldn’t be. She tore her 
message into shreds and again waited, for such a cable 
would surely bring Arch and Madame Slater and the 
eldest son over to London. 

Being alone was terrifying. A curious melee of acci¬ 
dents and brutal murders and treachery lined themselves 
up in phalanges and marched triumphantly out from 
some dusky corner of her submerged self and frightened 
her. Habitually she skipped the horrors in the flamboy¬ 
ant dailies. Where had all her dreadful knowledge come 
from—the hideousness of life—its inexorable cruelty? 

Elizabeth thought of Lucy Penrose with deepening 
affection. She even contemplated sending for her and 
Lize. Lucy’s judgment would likely coincide with her 
mother-in-law’s. Both women were certain to follow out 
the same line of action and to look with scorn upon any¬ 
one who did otherwise. 

Poignantly Elizabeth felt the need of help. She had 
been strong enough to carry herself since she had learned 
to stand alone at fourteen months, but she had sustained 
herself because there was no other way. And now she 
felt courage was demanded of her for the whole tribe of 
Slater, for here was a threatening sorrow that might very 
cruelly cut into the life of its members. 

When at last Mr. Barthrup’s message came, Elizabeth 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


179 


could scarcely believe its truth. First she wept and then 
she laughed, and then she wept. She crawled into bed 
and wept. The only way to meet the situation was to 
laugh. What a ridiculous race the Slaters were! Truly the 
magnificent families of the world with their dignified pre¬ 
tensions and attendant grand manners and worshipped 
customs were the most comical product of modern bar¬ 
barism. Inevitably they missed out on the humorous and 
so made tragedy out of what should, by natural law of 
the ironies, be high comedy. She must help Anthony to 
the comic. Poor boy! Poor boy! He seemed less wise 
than Lize and quite as inexperienced. 

Having dried her eyes, Elizabeth ordered five o’clock 
tea and its delicate accessories. For this once in her 
experience, she felt deliciously lazy, glad to sag about in 
bed until nightfall, when she would dress and sally forth 
to capture her mad brother-in-law, Anthony Slater, 
known to a certain obscure part of London as Pasquale 
Annino, “The Alert Cow-Puncher.” 

But was Anthony mad? If he blundered wide of Slater 
lines of conduct, it was not without knowing they were 
there. She, too, had jumped the tracks. Was she mad? 
Who should arbitrate? Madame Slater? Arch? As long 
as life lasted, she suspected, Arch would be her final 
judge, though his decisions cut mercilessly into the 
inmost desires of her heart. Even now, in the dark, she 
felt his eyes of burnished steel fixed disapprovingly upon 
her. But Anthony, who was like his brother in countless 
ways, rarely condemned or found fault with anything she 
did or was. It was easy enough to be attached to a man 
like that. The inner circle of the clan were wholly 


180 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


devoted to him; his mother and Arch and even the un¬ 
speakable eldest brother. She, too, felt a passionate 
desire to haul him out of this new disaster he had fallen 
for, if it were a disaster. 


CHAPTER VI 


Elizabeth stood waiting in the dark, at the stage 
entrance of the Lyric Theatre—not the Lyric famous in 
two continents, but a tawdry, brown-faced Lyric known 
only to a humble people who inhabited a thrifty but 
obscure part of London. By her side stood a plain-clothes 
man who was to disappear when Anthony came out into 
the night. Mr. Barthrup had arranged the details to 
which Elizabeth was as usual indifferent. In the narrow 
street where she stood, enclosed by high dusky walls, a 
narrow river of stars above her head shone forth mysteri¬ 
ously. She waited many minutes. When at last the 
stage door opened, a young girl appeared and a lame, 
sloppy creature hitched up to her side. They touched 
hands. 

“How is she?” the girl asked. 

“Dead!” 

They went swiftly into the night. 

The door opened again and again. All sorts of oddish 
people came out of the entrance she was watching so 
closely, loomed clear for an instant, then passed on into 
the deeply shadowed street. 

A tall thin man in a top hat and an ulster appeared. 

“Anthony!” Elizabeth said aloud. And so she tucked 
her arm in his and walked swiftly into the night. 

“Arrah, Patsey!” a harsh voice shrilled as they, too, 
181 


182 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


passed on. “The white cross knight! See him, girlies. 
Mind the baby!” 

“You were wonderful: there is no one like you,” Eliza¬ 
beth said rapidly. 

“Stop your josh and explain.” 

“Fd rather talk to you about your marvelous riding.” 

“Explain your being here!” 

“My word!” Elizabeth mocked. 

“Explain!” 

The boy’s arm on which Elizabeth’s hand was resting 
ever so lightly, shook; a Slater trick, this trembling! 

Scorched by a memory, she stood apart from him. 

“Oh, well,” she said gently, “I came to see you ride, of 
course, and of course I came with an—acquaintance. 
Afterwards, I waited for you. When you came out, the— 
acquaintance very considerately left me to walk home 
with you, or you to walk back to the hotel with me. You 
see I want to tell you how wonderful I-” 

“Quit joshing!” 

In brotherly fashion, Anthony again took Elizabeth’s 
arm well within his and so for a space they walked on in 
silence. 

After a while Elizabeth spoke and this time her voice 
sounded even more gentle than before, though she laughed 
a little between some of her words. 

“You are a Slater,” she said, “and you know it is 
simply impossible for a Slater to escape his family. They 
are always after each other with a set determination that 
makes me shiver. Every clansman, I imagine, owns a 
conning tower, field glasses and binoculars; convenient 
articles enough for the-” Elizabeth stopped short 




FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


183 


and looked up toward the dark silhouette of her brother- 
in-law’s face. The line of his mouth seemed to have 
relaxed as if he were amused. 

“Oh,” she said with a burst of enthusiasm, “I didn’t 
know that you had it in you. I mean the dash and 
abandon. There may be hope for my three solemn, intel¬ 
lectual boys who have already begun to take prizes for 
good scholarship—scholarship in ‘adds and take-aways,’ ” 
she added ironically. 

“See here, Elizabeth, how did you get over here, any¬ 
how?” Anthony demanded as he steered her swiftly away 
from the onslaught of a spinning taxi. 

“Easy enough! But Anthony, please, please don’t ever 
again dare to disappear. It is cruel and silly. You 
frightened me. In another day I should have cabled to 
your mother. That would have loosed the hounds of 
Scotland Yard upon you. If you are in trouble, you 
might trust me. But if you can’t, there is Arch.” 

“Huh!” Anthony snorted. 

“You are never quite reasonable,” Elizabeth continued. 
“You might at least have tried me. If it was mortifying 
because of that not-borrowing-from-a-woman rag, and if 
you couldn’t wait for Arch, there was still Archibald Sat- 
terlee. He is a gentleman even if he is a bit—oddish and 
inexplicable.” 

“I did try Satterlee.” 

“Was it merely money? Then why—why-?” 

“Oh, well, he advised me to go to you. I told him I 
had once, and never would again; for call it a rag or not, 
borrowing from a woman is a short cut to perdition.” 

“Did Mr. Satterlee refuse to help you?” 


184 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“He said you always had more money than you spent 
and that lately you had inherited a third fortune from 
some frowsty English cousin who has just heeled out. It 
was an old maid cousin who once doted on your mother. 
He seemed to be fairly well informed about her affairs 
and yours. By George! I call it damned impertinent.” 

“It was an extraordinary piece of news to me anyhow,” 
Elizabeth laughed cheerfully. 

For forty rods Elizabeth plunged ahead, her mind 
dizzy with a wild scheme. As she thought she walked 
swiftly. Anthony had difficulty in keeping her pace. 

“Her name was Gwendolyn Tawney,” she said, drop¬ 
ping to a slower pace. “There was an honourable 
attached to it. Imagine an old, old woman being called 
The Honourable Gwendolyn! Her fortune will come in 
handy just now, for I am about to spend enormous sums 
of money. I happen to have some wonderful property 
that once belonged to my mother—a strip of golden sand 
dunes up in North Wales, where I am planning to build 
for myself a stone house, a sort of French castle-chateau, 
like the Prince of Wales’ castles, with towers and long 
halls and enclosing courts and fascinating double stair¬ 
ways rising from the greensward to the second story. 
Well, nothing as imposing as the Edward castles, per¬ 
haps. But I’ll have a stone house with untrammelled 
spaces and broad windows that face the North Sea and 
the ancient sand dunes that come tumbling half a mile in 
from the ocean and look like great billows gloriously 
turned to gold. And just naturally I want you to build 
it for me. I am tired,” she said with a quick drop in her 
voice. “Won’t you find a place where we can sit down? 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


185 


We might talk our dozen troubles smash bang out tonight, 
and have beautifully done with them.” 

“We will chance it here.” 

Anthony made way toward the dusky steps of a public 
building of past pretensions. “It smells ratty,” he said 
apologetically, as he took his place a short distance from 
Elizabeth and automatically lighted a cigarette. 

“I am glad I found you,” Elizabeth sighed contentedly. 
“You see when I have decided to do anything big, I can’t 
abide waiting. I want to build my house immediately. 
Will you help me?” 

“Gosh all hemlocks!” 

Anthony swore boisterously, but his voice came near 
cracking, for it would be delicious to build a house for 
Elizabeth. Already his imagination held fast to the idea. 
But, maybe, it was not because he could build houses that 
his sister-in-law had been so eager to find him. And 
deuce take it! How in thunder had she maneuvered that 
act, he’d like to know. 

Content to wait, Elizabeth held her mind delicately 
poised, ready to meet the next perilous question that 
might be put to her. In the trembling silence, Anthony 
felt he was telling her his troubles. It was the easiest of 
all modes of communication and with Elizabeth, quite 
possible. 

“You have been gambling,” Elizabeth said finally. 

“Beyond a doubt.” 

“It is such a—funny vice.” 

“But a vice,” Anthony insisted. 

“And the results seem to be quite inconvenient.” 

“Quite.” 


186 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Still, gambling isn’t half as vicious as your eldest 
brother’s cultivated sins, thinly concealed and swiftly 
smudged over by the clan. It is less devastating than the 
habits of a drunkard or a flaming, uncontrolled temper, 
and it is far less disgusting than any of the physical indul¬ 
gences when carried to excess. I should call gambling a 
mental riot and so merely a minor crime at its worst. 
But somehow, the clan, in attempting to help you, has 
thrown a glaring arc-light on your iniquities, and if you 
don’t look out, their thinking you a black sheep will make 
you one.” 

“By dyeing my wool,” Anthony mocked. “You are 
speaking of things you know not of.” 

“All of us have our vices. Even your mother, to the 
outside world, seems arrogant. And I—I crave so to be 
untrammelled, to be utterly free, that I——” 

But Anthony knew about her. Why finish what she 
was saying, Elizabeth asked herself as she closed her eyes 
to shut out the stars, grown hateful to her imagination, 
for they were even more obedient to law than her inexor¬ 
able mother-in-law. There they were, pinned to space, 
moving but fixed, a warning and a judgment. 

“The house on the dunes is vastly fascinating,” An¬ 
thony said, again giving his imagination free play. “But 
I am in debt to the extent of eight thousand pounds. All 
I can manage is my interest. Beardsley, Page & Clewett 
do not pay me enough for that. You see they know I am 
a darn fool. So I am on the stage, and as long as my 
engagement lasts, I manage and a little more. The devil 
of it is, the little more, I waste, if you will believe me, 
on craps.” 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


187 


“No!” 

“Yes!” 

“Are there any times, when you don’t want to do it; 
gamble, I mean?” 

“Lord, yes! When I have something on hand I want 
to do more. I sometimes cut it out for long spaces, 
maybe two weeks. But in a gay crowd you can waste a 
fortune in a night or make one. When I am alone, I 
keep working out new schemes and combinations. It’s 
awfully interesting. And then when the chance comes, I 
try them out. They sometimes work bully well, but in 
the end I have no luck.” 

“You have found that out? In the end no human 
being has any luck. Mostly the no-luck is tragedy; 
but sometimes it is merely inconvenient, like your losing 
money. Have you,” she paused and then went on hesi¬ 
tatingly, “no reserve resources?” 

“Mother gave me some technical books, more than a 
thousand dollars’ worth. When I was short of cash I sold 
them. Satterlee asked to take them off my hands. I let 
him. He said he would pay me by check. After a week 
he sent me fifty dollars. When it comes to a deal, Satter¬ 
lee is half Yankee and half Jew, damn him! On special 
days, like Christmas and birthdays,” Anthony added con¬ 
scientiously, Mother makes me elaborate gifts, for I am 
not to be trusted with money. Naturally, they fall to the 
second-hand dealers who haunt my chambers as they did 
when I was in Harvard. But I am rid of them for the 
moment, for my rooms are plucked and singed, not one 
pinfeather in evidence.” 

“And so improved,” Elizabeth said lightly. 


188 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Not on your life! In some cunning mother-way, she 
managed to have my rooms furnished the way I like best. 
You know her convictions about environment and the 
refining influence of a Dalton teapot. As I have sold out 
Mother’s jolly vases of antique Cloisonne and Sheffield 
plate, my loyal landlady has lent me red and purple hor¬ 
rors; lent me, take notice.” 

Elizabeth chuckled. “How is it,” she said, “that in 
the end, the landlady invariably holds the whip hand?” 

“Not on your blooming hat! Mine lets me in morn¬ 
ings, when she opens the door for that cat with the jade 
eyes I told you about. Someone’s been watching my 
rooms and so she’s put a “to let” sign in one of the win¬ 
dows. It’s a plain-clothes man, I shouldn’t wonder,” 
Anthony added gravely. “Anyhow, she can’t turn me 
out, for Mother has paid her the rent for a year ahead, 
lest that money also get ditched and her youngest wander 
the streets of London, homeless and helpless.” 

Elizabeth, who shied away from explanations, repressed 
an inclination to tell Anthony she was responsible for the 
man who had been prowling about his chambers. Even 
in the deep shadow she fancied she saw his face flush. 
His voice shook as he brought his sentence to an end. He 
had his pride, too, like the rest of the clan, but Madame 
Slater seemed to forget this. 

“At any rate,” she said cheerfully, putting her hand 
on Anthony’s arm as she rose to go on, “you won’t see 
much of the horrors when you once begin to build my 
house near Harlech.” 

“Harlech House, I like the sound of it,” Anthony said 
happily. “Gosh! Elizabeth, I have had so little real 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


189 


experience. You will be obliged to let Beardsley make 
the plans for it. He knows what he is about.” 

“I have no desire to employ the experienced and the 
competent. I hate their slickery, worn-smooth ways.” 

“You jolly well won’t when it comes to house¬ 
building.” 

“I know perfectly well what I want. I want you. If 
you refuse the job, the house doesn’t get built. That is 
fixed.” 

Anthony began to whistle while his thoughts whirli- 
gigged around and around, with Harlech House for the 
pivot. “I’m awfully sorry, but you can’t have towers,” 
he said distinctly. 

“The beautiful ones have four.” 

“And in some hocus-pocus way manage to be beautiful 
in spite of the four.” 

“Manage! They are.” 

“Hell! No!” 

Elizabeth went to bed that night, satisfied that 
Anthony was what Arch called Slater-safe. When in the 
stillness of her own room she thought the odd adventure 
over, she realized that he had been lost for only a week, 
and then that actually he hadn’t been lost at all. Likely 
half that he had said to her about meeting the interest 
on his debts, and his new lurkings and his deviltry about 
craps had been his swift imaginings. He lived hard and 
fast into the future, often quite out of the realm of fact 
or even chance. She who hated tacked-down creatures, 
realized cynically that she was preparing to try the ham- 
mer-and-nail method on him. 

Anthony was wild to build the house; on fire to begin. 


190 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


And she? It had been anything to keep the boy out of 
mischief, to restore to him the eight thousand pounds 
of which he had been fleeced, to give him the opportunity 
to earn it. According to Slater creed, there could be no 
more borrowings and no more lendings between them. 
But she had found another road. She did not, of course, 
actually want to have a Harlech House or any other kind 
of house. She, too, had been guilty of projections. And 
it would have been so much less of a nuisance simply to 
have written Anthony a check for the eight thousand 
pounds. 

One debt she owed to her brother-in-law, she told her¬ 
self as she snapped out her night lamp preparatory to 
sleep; she must give an adequate explanation of his devia¬ 
tions to Mr. Barthrup. But the Anthony story, after all 
not startlingly out of line, could wait until she went to his 
office, some day the following week, to talk over the 
still astonishing will of the Honourable Gwendolyn. 


CHAPTER VII 


Already Elizabeth’s fortnight in London had length¬ 
ened into a month, and now Gwendolyn Tawney’s will 
was likely to detain her in the mist and fog beyond her 
choosings. Mr. Barthrup pronounced the will legally 
taut, at the same time assuring her that as yet no one had 
attempted to question its validity. 

He promised settlement without undue delay though 
inventories had to be made and verified, for the Crown 
laid a heavy hand on inherited property, by way of taxa¬ 
tion. There was, moreover, a country house in Devon 
with many dependents'; old servants, both male and 
female; several valuable cats of Egyptian breed; two 
very fine King Charles spaniels; and eight French 
poodles, bench dogs of a fine record. These the Honour¬ 
able Gwendolyn had commended to Elizabeth’s just and 
faithful care. The question arose whether she could have 
them chloroformed and still conform to the exactions of 
the will. After an exhaustive examination of the history 
of deceased benefactors’ pets, Mr. Barthrup gave the 
legal opinion that she could not. He also reported that 
“the several valuable cats,” so defined in the will, counted 
up to twenty-three on the day of her cousin’s decease; 
that since that date seven kittens had been born. Of 
these the estate was accountable for the four oldest. The 
other three were rightfully her property, to dispose of as 
she saw fit. Mr. Barthrup gravely advised their immedi¬ 
ate death. 


191 


192 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


In reply to another question put by Elizabeth in des¬ 
perate mood, she received a lengthy document on the 
longevity of canines and felines. Certain breeds of 
dogs, it seemed, occasionally lived to be twenty years old. 
But this was phenomenal. Cats were less tenacious of 
life. 

“More than likely,” Mr. Barthrup scrawled at the bot¬ 
tom of the last neatly typed page, “ten years will cover 
the extent of your obligation to the deceased’s live 
stock.” 

After this Elizabeth was careful not to ask gratuitous 
questions. 

In addition to the live stock, Elizabeth found she had 
inherited twenty unrealized and distantly removed 
cousins. She began receiving letters from them, deli¬ 
cately asking for or frankly demanding certain heirlooms 
which were theirs by right of familiarity or relationship, 
having formerly belonged to their branch of the family 
and-not to the Tawney’s. There was a portrait by Hol¬ 
bein or very probably by Holbein, which was conspicu¬ 
ously in demand. 

Elizabeth, who was puzzled by the voluminous letters 
of her twenty new cousins who asked her for things she 
knew not of, turned the entire bothersome correspondence 
over to her lawyer. “I who have had no cousins am 
glad of the twenty,” she said sadly, “but what am I to 
do when they all want the same things; I don’t see what 
I am to do.” 

“Keep everything yourself,” he advised, for in his soul, 
he disliked the cousins more than the cats. “Cutting the 
unlikely Holbein into twenty strips, or dividing the silver 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


193 


plate, would be iniquities of which you will never be 
guilty. When the seething desire for things not theirs has 
subsided, then it would be fitting,” he admitted grudg¬ 
ingly, “to make each one of them a present. Personally, 
I should do nothing of the kind. I do not care for 
cousins, though some of the Devon twenty are or at least 
may be, desirable assets. I will find out which and let 
you know.” 

“Here comes another typewritten document,” Eliza¬ 
beth thought resentfully, for this new set of obligations 
and entanglements that so unexpectedly had fallen from 
nowhere, developed in her a new and unanalyzed gloom. 
She could scarcely meet the necessity to look through 
Gwendolyn’s personal effects. To open her exquisitely 
kept writing desk was pure impertinence. What was she 
to do with her rows of French brocade slippers that rep¬ 
resented several hundred pounds sterling and were too 
tiny for the modern woman? In the attics of her London 
house, there were boxes and chests packed with labelled 
paper parcels. Her toilet accessories were beyond any¬ 
thing of the kind Elizabeth imagined possible. There were 
cosmetics enough to kill an army, to run a shop, or to 
make even a small fortune, but not enough to restore 
to the Honourable Gwendolyn the beauty of her lost 
youth. And the care of all these things, the rouge pots, 
the letters, the silk garments and the frizzled wigs had 
fallen upon her, a stranger. Hateful were the pitiful 
makeshifts of the old woman, hateful also their exposure. 

Gwendolyn Tawney had lived too much unto herself. 
That was the trouble; that was why she had no friends; 
that was why she had left to her, an alien, the deconse- 


194 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


crating of her most sacred household gods, her diaries, 
her letters, her mementos. 

In the end, Elizabeth blamed that mysterious destiny 
that puts us into this world and then puts us out! Free¬ 
dom was something man couldn’t force. She remembered 
Aunt Fan’s mid-Victorian, illogical philosophy with a new 
sense of its meaning. How she had delighted in quoting 
to her the saws by which she lived—mottoes, she called 
them. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” “The 
wise man, alone, is the free man.” “Eternal vigilance—” 

Impulsively Elizabeth wrote two letters, the day 
before she left London. One, merely a note, was to 
Archibald Satterlee, inviting him to join Anthony in com¬ 
ing to Bethgelert for the Christmas holidays; the other 
was to Madame Slater, for she, too, would be punctilious 
about news. She wrote of the Honourable Gwendolyn 
Tawney and the astounding will. Remembering the 
house in the Fenway, she described some of the beautiful 
things she had inherited, the old silver and the lace and 
the doubtful Holbein; and then because her mother-in- 
law liked a dash of the absurd, she told her of the twenty- 
three cats and the twenty cousins, the brocaded slippers 
and the French poodles, the dependents, both male and 
female. Finally, she wrote about her Christmas plans 
which included both Anthony and Archibald Satterlee. 


CHAPTER VIII 


To her annoyance, Elizabeth found herself in the 
Great Western forty minutes ahead of her schedule. 
She was surprised at her folly; a railway station she 
counted one of the black fruits of civilization. On the 
platform there was a brute of a girl with a collie dog, 
who troubled her. The unhappy creature fixed pathetic 
eyes on Elizabeth and once in passing, sprang impetu¬ 
ously toward her. With a flooding memory of San and 
Sanny, Elizabeth paused for a hazardous instant while 
a cool, ingratiating nose nuzzled her ungloved hand, to 
be jerked off immediately with a clink of chains and an 
irate, “Pardon, Madame.” 

As Elizabeth came down the platform for the dozenth 
time, she saw ahead of her a man with a stick that was 
too big for him. In an indefinite fashion the stick and 
the man reminded her of the past. She thought it would 
be an admirable stick to lay with firm and steady strokes 
upon the brutish girl. When the man turned, she found 
herself facing Archibald Satterlee. 

“Same old stick,” she said. 

“Same old coat,” he said in assenting voice. “It is a 
refined, useful coat that has passed its youth and sunk 
into place with the nice dignity of the well-bred.” 

Archibald fixed plaintive eyes on Elizabeth. 

“No use,” she discouraged. “It sounds silly and 
forced.” 

“I thought it might do for my next play.” 

195 


196 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“It might, if you let a man say it who is a fraction 
over the edge.” 

“Thank you.” Satterlee extracted, from a sagging 
pocket, a morocco notebook and jotted down something. 

“Where has all your gaiety gone?” Elizabeth de¬ 
manded, as Satterlee adapted his step to hers and 
together they continued their restless pacings. 

“Into these,” Satterlee handed her a bunch of deep 
crimson roses that a messenger boy brought up at that 
minute. 

“You don’t seem real any more.” 

“But my cane!” 

“It isn’t yours, of course.” 

“No; it belongs to your husband—your quondam hus¬ 
band. I hold it on a long-run bet, not with Archibald 
Slater, but with that plain Julianna Something who is his 
sister. You once joined the Slater tribe. Possibly you 
know who that Julianna is and what she is and why. I 
call her a minor deviless.” 

Elizabeth, who found herself growing crimson with re¬ 
sentment, turned fiercely away and coming face to face 
with the girl and the dog, she gave her the roses. 

“You have a beautiful collie,” she said. 

The collie was for sale. Before Elizabeth had time to 
consider, the leash was in her hand and the brown-eyed 
collie was following her more gentle lead. 

“You, at least, have not changed,” he said, as they 
again walked the length of the platform. 

“Arch used to give red roses to Aunt Fan.” 

“Therefore, it was a blazing indiscretion for me to give 
red roses to you. Don’t imagine I didn’t know.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


197 


Again Elizabeth flushed and swerved away from Sat- 
terlee. He laughed somewhat brutally, she thought. 

“That pup looks like one of your old collies; Singen, 
wasn’t it?” 

“No, Sanny.” 

“San and Sanny?” 

“Quite so.” 

Satterlee laughed as if he were amused by his crippled 
memory. “I made a joke about them once, a good joke. 
What an ass I am to forget! It had something to do with 
pants—the kind they drop from their widely open mouths 
after they have been chasing rats and those they wear on 
their legs and can’t drop.” 

Satterlee’s futile reminiscences ended in a small gay 
chuckle that sounded like a habit. “Now we have had a 
quarrel,” he said boldly, “and it is over, and it was about 
nothing just as in the old days.” He spoke with renewed 
confidence, though he told himself that in talking with 
Elizabeth he felt like a blind man hunting with his cane 
for a curb which is not there. 

“I am not so certain,” she said as she watched the slow 
progress of a woman with three babies, who was making 
her way toward the booking office. 

“I hope you are certain about one thing, and that is 
the will of the Honourable Gwendolyn Tawney made in 
your favor. There are no contestants?” 

Again Satterlee smiled in a foolishly pleased fashion; 
for at last he was saying to Elizabeth what he had come 
to say to her, and lately, he had found himself doing, not 
the things he set out to do, but others. Nerves, of 
course! 


198 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“It was a detestable will. Gwendolyn Tawney had no 
right to lay her cold hands of death upon me and to 
destroy my freedom. I never once saw her. When my 
mother, who had a tender heart, went to visit ‘the hag 
with the corkscrew curls,’ she never took her little daugh¬ 
ter, lest she get too early a knowledge of the sham things 
little girls aren’t supposed to know exist.” 

“But her money; her money. That isn’t sham. Surely, 
you are glad to have inherited her money!” 

“And what am I to do with the Honourable Gwendo¬ 
lyn’s money?” 

“I know my England. That is where, dear Lady, I can 
be of assistance to you. The Honourable Gwendolyn’s 
town house is wonderful, even for London. The furniture 
is worth its weight in sapphires. I used to call upon her 
quite frequently, and to tell her about you. It is where 
you ought to live and to surround yourself with a wonder¬ 
ful crowd of men and women. You don’t know yet. 
London is the greatest city in the world and the 
people-” 

But he was fanning the air with his words, for Eliza¬ 
beth had turned impatiently away. She had her newly 
acquired dog’s travelling accommodations to look out 
for and she was growing every minute more furious with 
herself and with Satterlee, for she found she was sus¬ 
picious of his motives, and she was angry with herself for 
her suspicions. The memory of him as she had known 
him in the past still fascinated her, though he stirred in 
her nature new ferocities. Even as he was now, roiled 
and uncertain, she found him interesting. The interest, 
however, she was inclined to ascribe to the natural reac- 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


199 


tion that she knew inevitably followed a long repression. 

Satterlee fixed burning eyes upon her as she at last 
prepared to take her seat in solitary and secured gran¬ 
deur in a third-class compartment with special privileges 
for the collie. 

“Do you remember the words of the Greek poet, I for¬ 
get which? ‘We are all climbing the same road; a road on 
which no one can stand still—only some of us turn 
around and go down where, of course, we Christians know 
the devil is waiting to catch us.’ Hell!” Satterlee swore, 
as the train pushed smoothly out from the sheds. “Damn 
it! Damn it! It’s not my fault.” 


CHAPTER IX 


Dr. Philander Williams, who had a round, sensitive 
face and rabbit ears that attracted the immediate notice 
of strangers, met Elizabeth at the Bethgelert station. 
“You have been extremely prompt,” he said. “I scarcely 
expected you on this train.” 

Elizabeth dropped her bag and stared. “Why did you 
expect me at all? I had planned to wait until the 
fifteenth.” 

“Then you failed to receive my telegrams?” 

Elizabeth looked down the wind-blown station and 
breathed deep. “Lize?” she said, as a yellow leaf shiv¬ 
ered past her. 

“Your daughter is with my children.” 

“Then what; then what?” Elizabeth repeated with a 
wild determination to elicit for once a swift reply from 
the Welsh doctor. 

Dr. Philander Williams pushed Elizabeth sympatheti¬ 
cally into his little American car which he called Pru¬ 
dence Dodge, and drove her slowly toward Plas-tan-y- 
craig. “But why, Mrs. Slater, if you didn’t know, are 
you here?” the doctor stubbornly repeated. 

“You tell me,” Elizabeth said, her face turning white 
with a new dread. 

“Miss Penrose is not dead-” 

“Lucy Penrose?” 

“She had started up the Rhyd Thu pass toward Snow¬ 
don. Somehow, she lost her way and slipped off the 
200 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


201 


path. She must have been fairly well up, for she rolled 
down the soft shale which some of the villagers call 
screes, a word of Scotch origin. Curious about words. 
By some fluke she escaped the rocks and two precipices 
that break the glidders. It was Lize’s collie that found 
her after a fall or, to be precise, a slide, of five hundred 
feet or more. Miss Penrose is injured, of course, and 
cruelly shaken. She may recover, though hers is the sort 
of nervous shock that most of us never do get over. It is 
too early to make promises, though with such a clean 
physical record as Miss Penrose’s, it is not unreasonable 
to hope for a slow but steady improvement. The collie is 
dead. Exertion beyond his powers and excitement, 
maybe, caused heart failure. Wonderful breed of dogs 
from the Trevellyan Kennels—saved from over-refine¬ 
ment by a wolf strain. But why,” again Dr. Philander 
fixed unbelieving eyes upon the American, “why, if you 
did not know what happened, did you bring back with 
you a collie pup?” 

Elizabeth, who was shaken by a new horror of life, bit 
her trembling lips to a semblance of calm and asked her 
companion some of the necessary facts that closely con¬ 
cerned Lucy and her comfort. She knew Dr. Philander 
Williams to be a sensitive man who went about his daily 
practice in shiny blue serge and white sweaters, and who 
was culpably careless in the collection of his bills. 
Withal, he had a marvelous whistle which Lize adored. 
Even now he was whistling, but softly, and on the off side 
of his mouth, out of respect to her, she surmised. The 
necessity was upon her to know more of him, and she 
looked squarely into his dark brown eyes in search of 


202 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the trijth. The light of understanding flashed between 
them and a happy belief in his kindness passed into a 
still happier belief in his goodness. Here was a man who 
would help her meet this new and overwhelming trouble 
which already towered above her with its limitless pos¬ 
sibilities of misery and wretchedness. 

“Poor Lucy Penrose, poor Lucy, poor, poor Lucy,” 
Elizabeth kept saying to herself as the wheels of Pru¬ 
dence Dodge spun slowly around in their course down 
the river road, along the stone wall, over the bridge to 
Plas-tan-y-craig. Already pity had burned deep into her 
heart. 

Dr. Williams stopped long enough between two minor 
tunes, to say, “Here we are! Whoa, up there, Prudence. 
Steady now!” 

“Tell me what to do; I don’t know what to do,” she 
said beseechingly, as she stepped out of the car and so 
shook herself free of entrammelling rugs. 

To this, Dr. Williams made the hardest to meet of all 
possible replies. “There is nothing you can do, but 
wait.” 


CHAPTER X 


In the long, clogging illness which followed, Lucy re¬ 
vealed a placidity not unlike Madame Slater’s, a quality 
of soul plus an attitude of mind in which Elizabeth 
wholly disbelieved. To her, the fate of the New Eng¬ 
land girl seemed outrageous. 

Elizabeth arranged to give Lucy her own bedroom, 
overlooking Moel Hebog and because Lucy preferred grey 
wall paper with blue curtains she had the room so deco¬ 
rated for her. Lucy loved flowers. She flooded the room 
with roses and carnations brought from London with the 
utmost difficulty. She could not bear noises. Elizabeth 
kept the house as quiet, almost, as Lucy was herself. She 
liked, sometimes, to be read to. Elizabeth thinned her 
voice to a thread and read from whatever book she hap¬ 
pened to be interested in. The choice made no difference 
to Lucy. 

Then one day Elizabeth discovered that Lize called 
Plas-tan-y-craig the graveyard house. Whereupon, after 
a puzzling and stubborn struggle with its owner, she 
gained possession of the little inn which was not more 
than a stone’s throw from the house, and which stood 
closed during the long winter months. It was now the 
first of December, and though she had by this time devel¬ 
oped an inflamed animosity for change, she put the place 
in order and established there a separate menage for her¬ 
self and her little daughter. Then she filled the low 
halls of the ancient caravansary with greens preparatory 
203 


204 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


to Christmas, and rechristened the hostelry, restoring its 
ancient and rightful name, “The White Wren.” 

For every one concerned, the change proved a happy 
one. The nurses were better satisfied; Lize returned to 
her natural chatterbox ways and Elizabeth, for the first 
time since she had chosen to play a lone hand, found that 
she coyld write with at least a modicum of her usual 
intelligence. The spirit of Moel Hebog began to run in 
her veins. After the quiet but monotonous day with 
Lucy was over, abridged at both ends, she still had long, 
uninterrupted hours in which to work. Before she started 
forth on her journey for freedom, Elizabeth had thought 
through her story and plotted it with what she called 
scientific exactitude. What remained was to fill it in. 
But she found that her isolated surroundings crept into 
her soul, both intensifying and modifying her convic¬ 
tions, and not infrequently making merciless inroads on 
her fictitious buildings. She felt thwarted. Instead of 
clippety-clopping along as in the old days, she was halted 
by her own questioning spirit. She was no longer sure 
of things. She had lost forever that all-conquering cer¬ 
tainty of youth. 

Inwardly, Elizabeth was shocked by her inherent 
callous spirit. She found she could be quite happy with¬ 
out her three blue-eyed sons. Never had she been as 
happy as she was now—never since she had lost Aunt 
Fan. Attempting to live up to Slater requirements had 
from the first appalled her; she had also found these a 
nuisance; modifying her clothes; changing her speech; 
omitting the necessary word, damn, from her vocabulary 
—or if not damn, its lady-like equivalent, darn; doing, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


205 


she summed up, a million things that counted for naught 
except in a Slater mind; and forgetting how beautiful 
life really was, losing the early dawn and the mysterious 
nights, exchanging the things that are vital for upholstery 
and electric lights; letting conventionality suffocate 
adventure. 

The strange fact about Arch had been that though he 
knew there was something splendid outside his conven¬ 
tional stonewall that shut him in, he refused to break 
bounds. An intense sense of duty had cut him off from 
his rightful human development. She preferred An¬ 
thony’s gambling. She preferred Anthony, anyway; he 
was less Slaterish. Since the accident, he had been ex¬ 
quisitely kind to her and to Lucy. Strange, how she had 
let herself depend upon him and he upon her! 

Frequently, too, she thought of her own oldest son 
who began winning gold medals at the preposterous age 
of ten. She felt safe about Archibald Fourth. He was 
better off without her, less likely to discover that his gold 
medals were tinsel. But could he ever, even with her 
disillusioning presence, discover such heresy? As Archi¬ 
bald Fourth was, so were the two other boys. She 
couldn’t feel sorry for them. It was such an interesting 
experience to be alive; to live, to be free to be, to act, to 
dream. Even yet, she was intoxicated with life. Her 
sons, moreover, would have splendid training. There 
would be nothing pagan in their bringing up, except, 
possibly, profound respect for clan-tradition. She would 
like to leaven their loaf, she thought, and so for their 
Christmas she bought a number of jolly stories and wrote 
funny little rhymes on the blank pages and along the 


206 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


margins. But this gift seemed scarcely fair to Arch, 
since the boys were his, and so when the proper time 
came, she sent them to the rector’s red-headed boys. 


CHAPTER XI 


Archibald Satterlee came to the Christmas party a day 
early. He came as an undesired interruption. In the 
old days, he used to wear, in the winter, a light tweed 
overcoat or no coat at all, like many other New England 
men Elizabeth knew. She imagined this was to prove 
his hardihood. But Archibald Satterlee had changed. 
He now wore a fur-lined coat, spats, thick gloves, an im¬ 
portant hat and, despite his tailor, shivered. He was 
too consciously well-dressed. The whimsical lines in his 
now permanently grey face, even with their crinkling 
upward twists that recorded laughter, no longer concealed 
his weakened spirit. His mind, even, sagged. And yet, 
though he came out of time, what he called in his most 
successful English manner “out of form,” she was still 
glad to see him. 

After a scratch dinner, Elizabeth and Satterlee drew 
their chairs up in front of blazing logs and while he 
smoked nervously as though cigarettes were no longer to 
his pleasure, Elizabeth told him about Lucy Penrose, 
about the projected house at Harlech, about Anthony’s 
wild adventures and finally about Lize’s new tutor. 
Wildly, too, she speculated about her English cousins 
whom she expected on the morrow, cousins from the 
south of Devon, her next of kin, delightful people, Mr. 
Barthrup said, though impoverished, and very decent 
about the Honourable Gwendolyn’s will. Sitting thus 
cozily close to the glowing coals with a mature person by 
her side who listened attentively to what she said and 
207 


208 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


who seemed also to understand what she left unsaid, was 
very pleasant to Elizabeth. 

“Then there are no girls?” Satterlee finally spoke, 
throwing into the flames, as he did so, a newly lighted 
cigarette. 

“There is always the uninvited guest,” Elizabeth con¬ 
soled. 

“Gods! Gods ... no commiseration! There is but 
one thing to be said to flappers; ‘will you marry me?’ ” 

“And they never will, of course.” 

“It offers the only basis for conversation that can exist 
between us. But,” Satterlee looked sharply at Eliza¬ 
beth, “why ‘they never will, of course’?” 

“You seem so beyond it. Romance, I mean and 
passion.” 

“If you could know the still soliciting eyes that are 
forever fixed upon me!” 

Elizabeth glanced restlessly about the low, white¬ 
washed room. An outside shutter fretted in its moorings. 
In some painful way it reminded her of Blowmedown. 
A church clock out in the dark sounded twelve. Archi¬ 
bald Satterlee would soon go to his room. She hoped she 
might still continue her work. 

“Forgive me if I ascribe my goatish nature to the 
stars,” Satterlee said, leaning toward her. 

“You garble your Shakespeare.” Elizabeth spoke 
wearily, for the coals were out and she was bored. 

After another silence, in which Elizabeth decided she 
preferred a hot bath and a warm bed to more typewriting, 
Satterlee again spoke. “Are you satisfied?” 

“There are the monotonies ... of living, I mean. One 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


209 


can’t escape them. And when you have no towering bent 
—I sometimes remember Greece and Italy and wonder 
why I delay around Moel Hebog and my typewriter.” 

“In the spring, when the narcissi are in blossom, come 
with me to Greece.” 

“Some far isle in-” 

“Elizabeth,” Satterlee ferociously interrupted, “you 
are satirical.” 

“No, I remember.” 

“You are afraid.” 

“For Lize, yes.” 

“Damn those four Slater excrescences!” 

Outraged, Elizabeth rose to her feet and faced Satter¬ 
lee, his grey cheeks ebbing white, the light fading swiftly 
from his eyes. 

He rose at the same instant and moved uncertainly 
toward the door. “Pray for me,” he said mysteriously. 

Then she remembered what Anthony had told her 
about his fanaticism and choked down her resentment. 
“You will go to Early Mass?” she said quietly as she 
lighted for him a delicate wax candle in a polished pewter 
holder. “Loong Li will attend to you in the morning.” 

“Loong Li!” 

“He followed us over here, bringing with him his entire 
fortune, in a black portmanteau. Nothing I can urge 
will induce him to put his money in the bank. Actually, 
I don’t know that the bag contains his savings; if not 
money, then something else he treasures more than life 
itself, something he worships and guards. It is never 
quite out of his mind, I believe. Its loss would be 
calamitous.” 



210 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


After she had thus talked Satterlee out into the shad¬ 
owy hall and watched him climb the stone stairway with 
the two high rises, where the two irregular bends came, 
she turned back to light her own candle and to say good¬ 
night to Loong Li who was raking out the ashes. “He 
not welly good man,” Loong said as he pointed mysteri¬ 
ously upward. “He like all Chinaman, no good.” 

After she had reached her low bedchamber whose 
drooping ceiling hovered about her like a brooding hen, 
Elizabeth flung open a tiny window and kneeling by its 
sill, looked out into the black icy night. She choked her 
tears back till they strangled her; she bit her lips 
together, not to cry aloud; she gripped the casement with 
savage hands. Life was evil. What secret ugly thing 
had it done to Archibald Satterlee? She shuddered away 
from divination. What calamity had befallen him? 

And as she stared up into the sightless night, Eliza¬ 
beth was conscious that she was dramatizing her own 
feelings and the sordid facts, not so mysterious as she 
conceived them. Romance had nothing to do with his 
fall, neither romance nor loss, nor sorrow. Anthony 
knew what was the trouble with him and Loong Li knew 
and so did Elizabeth. It was in reality nothing worse 
than some drug-habit—opium, very likely. “But every¬ 
one has a right to decide for himself. Everyone must be 
free to choose. And anyway, who am I to judge?” 

A soft fumbling of the door-latch brought Elizabeth to 
attention. Lize came close to her. “Mother,” she said, 
“I am so scared. I dreamed I was a pig! May I sleep 
with you? It’s a funny house, isn’t it, Mother?” 


CHAPTER XII 


At breakfast, the following morning, Satterlee apolo¬ 
gized. He apologized for so many delinquencies that 
Elizabeth’s overnight resentment weakened to pity. “You 
are taking drugs, of course,” she said, vainly attempting 
to make her voice sound natural. “What a nuisance to 
be put by them into such horrid positions!” 

“The nuisance is, I can’t always get them; they are 
closing about me.” 

“Who?” 

“Who? Jesus! If I knew who! There’s a gang.” 

She looked at him with new horror. 

“It’s the lack of drugs, damn it! that puts me in a 
hole. Can’t you see that? The lack,” he repeated fret¬ 
fully. 

Nervously she poured a cup of black coffee for him, 
and he began to examine the covers. There were scones 
and toast and bacon, all burning hot. “I am hungry,” he 
said cheerfully. “That shows I am better. The fault is 
I came a day too soon.” 

Loong Li entered the room with a crystalline dish in 
which glistened and shimmered a golden pool of marma¬ 
lade. With exquisite deference, he placed it before his 
mistress and vanished. 

“He can be polite,” Satterlee laughed. “A duchess 
couldn’t treat a worm with greater disdain than your 
Chinaman treats me.” 

“Too bad! I’ll speak to him.” 

“No. no,” Satterlee said absently. 

211 


212 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“He can’t be as stupid as that, even in sleep,” Eliza¬ 
beth thought as she fixed curious eyes on his strange 
countenance. His soul seemed to be turned inward. 

Then, quite unexpectedly, he looked up and smiled. 
“That Chinaman of yours, I’ll make friends with him 
yet.” 

Satterlee ate his bacon and swallowed his second cup 
of coffee in silence. Loong Li, he thought, must have 
drugs of some sort. All Chinamen had. Gad! That 
was what he had brought with him so carefully in his 
hands all the way from America. Opium was the treas¬ 
ure he had refused to put in the bank! Bitterly, Satterlee 
regretted his first misadventure in the White Wren. For 
in some mysterious way, Loong Li had sensed his queer 
conduct toward Elizabeth and resented it. He had been 
jazzed. But how in hell was a man to know when the 
dope had worked off sufficiently for him to crawl once 
more into the light? Queer specimen, Loong Li! Queer 
name, when you came to think of it. Not his own, of 
course. He might be a spy, or a political refugee, or a 
criminal, damned of God and man. Satterlee smiled 
bleakly at his foolishness, for he recognized the almost 
infantile processes to which his mind was being reduced. 

The breakfast ended in silence. Elizabeth rose from 
her seat and slipping into a soft grey coat, so like the 
coat of Connecticut days that it made Satterlee wince, 
opened wide the windows. 

“You move too quickly,” Satterlee criticized. 

“You were mother’s good boy for too many years,” 
Elizabeth replied cheerfully. 

“Damn it! I was.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


213 


“That is the cause of your present profanities: repres¬ 
sion in your curly-haired youth. I am going over to see 
Lucy. We dine at one.” 

Satterlee slid into a soft chair in the living room and 
began to smoke. Tobacco had lost its power to soothe 
him. He opened a new box of cigarettes and fumbled 
it disappointedly. It was a lie, what the Jew-shop said. 
They had no opium in them. He shuddered back into 
the cushions and closed his eyes, for on the floor, near 
his feet, was something that would begin to crawl up his 
legs if he looked that way. After a wretched hour, he 
gained courage to pick up a book that happened to be on 
the low table by his side and began to read. To his 
mind, the volume was dull as pewter, its subject being 
about nature in the raw, and its author, John Muir. 

Finally, Loong Li brought in an armful of logs. That 
was his chief function in the old days: wood-carrying. 
Satterlee watched him place the logs on the fire and in 
the wood basket. He made no litter. Life-long habit, 
he conceded, might make any man proficient even in the 
difficult art of wood-carrying. 

“Li,” he said, “I have brought you some cigarettes, 
extra fine,” and he held out three boxes of his last disap¬ 
pointment to the Chinaman. 

“Thankee; me no smokee,” the old man declined, as he 
shuffled out of the room. 

“See here, Loong Li,” Satterlee shouted, but the old 
man would not turn. 

“Hang it! He might murder me in my sleep,” Sat¬ 
terlee thought. 

But swiftly he put this fancy away from him, dreading 


214 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


a new fixed idea that might torture him, sometime, in 
the dark. 

As the hours of the day rushed past, Satterlee found his 
nerves again obedient to his will. By afternoon he was 
in fairly equable spirits. His pulses flowed so evenly 
that he ventured to bring forth drawing pad and pen and 
to sketch a curious but beautiful oak chair, fashioned 
after no particular style, but so exquisitely and firmly 
finished that he considered it a museum piece. 


CHAPTER XIII 


Elizabeth found her Christmas party and her various 
English cousins distinctly satisfying. They made a long- 
cherished English storybook a reality. It was delightful 
of them to do and to say what she wished them to do and 
to say on all occasions and in varied situations. Their 
obsession about Christmas would inevitably be held a 
mark of insanity by any normal American, but as proof 
of a tradition, Elizabeth rejoiced in their Christmas com¬ 
plex. It was easy enough to understand why Anthony’s 
London friends, men of still experimental genius, declared 
family life a failure and decided against homes. 

It was the older and less distinguished family group 
from Devon, the group Gwendolyn Tawney had snubbed 
and life had overlooked, that Elizabeth invited to her 
party. Mostly, they held a trip to Wales a rash adven¬ 
ture, an undertaking to be considered and reconsidered 
before entered upon. Just the same, they had come, 
partly out of curiosity to see the heiress to Gwendolyn’s 
estate and partly for the break in the monotony of their 
safe existence. 

The cousins from Devonshire believed firmly in Christ¬ 
mas. It was a holiday to be made much of, to be hugged, 
to be squeezed, till every particle of joy it held for them 
had been attained. They decorated the house with 
evergreens and kept on decorating the house till Elizabeth 
felt she was living in an untidy forest. The old proprie¬ 
tor of the inn, a ruddy, outdoor man with a queer and 
215 


216 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


perpetual wink to his right eye, took possession of them, 
insisting upon the guests registering, writing sentiments 
in a tattered day-book, distributing the morning papers 
and finally the mail. Thereupon began a constant and 
curiously futile correspondence between the guests. The 
same enterprising individual discovered a cracked dinner 
bell and a coaching horn. After that every move the 
party made was heralded by a dreadful noise. Finally 
Elizabeth had the good fortune to secure the services of 
a Welshman who owned a French horn. The tuneless 
brass disappeared and several times a day the Welshman 
called the party to their meals or roused them for break¬ 
fast, or for some outdoor adventure. The Welshman 
furnished an endless fund for conversation and no one 
ever seemed to tire of his weird but beautiful music. 
Eventually the brass bell was gilded and hung above the 
office-desk where a ribbon with “Merry, Merry Christ¬ 
mas” printed along its streamers floated gaily from its 
handle. One of the three Pancras sisters, the youngest, 
who, Elizabeth understood, was not yet sixty, spent an 
entire day painting the ribbon, which was largely 
admired. A string hung from the bell clapper and this 
the man with a wink pulled frequently. 

Elizabeth had never known such automatically self- 
entertaining people. A fierce storm set in from the North 
Sea. Shut in the house, they at once adapted themselves 
to house-games. There followed charades, a resurrected 
play, the singing of many carols and hilarious five 
o’clocks. There was also one happy surprise from 
Elizabeth, for she had asked Mr. Barthrup to send down 
to her a box of the Honourable Gwendolyn’s silver plate 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


217 


and another of prints and books, such as would be 
appropriate for the cousins, heirlooms preferably. With 
the aid of the Pancras sisters, who knew to which family 
each object rightfully belonged, Elizabeth made what she 
hoped to be a suitable distribution of gifts. 

During the week of hilarity, Satterlee acted so nat¬ 
urally and was so kind to the cousins, that Elizabeth 
successfully put from her mind the first disillusioning day 
of his visit. The fact that he was a celebrity added very 
much to the pleasure of her guests. They carried away 
with them at least a peck of his autographs, and not to be 
impolite, a gill of hers. To her astonishment, Satterlee 
seemed to be impressed by their downright manners, 
while he copied to a nicety some of their odd Devon ways 
and turns of expression. “The Pancras sisters,” he told 
Elizabeth, “are extremely good form.” 

“Good form! My soul! The entire batch of them 
with their dilly amusements and their dally nothings 
makes me shout that I belong to the noble free,” An¬ 
thony interrupted as he shot insolent disapproval toward 
Satterlee whose lately acquired mannerisms he scorned. 

“Good form means everything.” 

“Sort of second gate to heaven!” 

“In London, yes.” 

“Huh!” 

“You don’t understand,” Satterlee said plaintively. 
“Neither you nor Elizabeth understand. London, the 
best of London, is heaven, the nearest we ever come to 
it. And good connections like Elizabeth’s are a—a sort 
of Sesame to the inner sanctuaries.” 

“Where dwell the blest,” Anthony drawled. 


218 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Where dwell the blest,” Satterlee repeated stub- 
bornly. 

“London is all right, but I fail to connect up,” Anthony 
said, changing his tactics to meet an anxiety he saw in 
Elizabeth’s face. “Maybe,” he added lazily, “you are 
thinking of Pancras station: that is one way into 
London.” 

The three of them were gathered as usual about the 
fire. The low, white-washed room, now cleared of its 
greens and tinsel and Christmas posters cribbed from the 
monthlies, again seemed to Elizabeth a dear spot. An¬ 
thony sat on a low bench, hugging his thin knees and 
smiling mildly into space. He spoke as he did every¬ 
thing, quietly and without emphasis. A gust of temper 
ruffled Satterlee’s soul as he watched him. With Eliza¬ 
beth to stand by, what did a few gambling debts matter? 
Gad! The boy was in luck. And now he was to build 
Harlech House! Pure Elizabethan benevolence, that! 
What an ass he had been to sell his life for a mess of 
pottage! When, when had the pottage come to mean 
more to him than beauty? Would Anthony do the same? 
At just what point in a man’s life did the giving up come? 
It came inevitably, to all men, except to that prig of a 
Slater whom Elizabeth had married. And what good had 
his immaculate knighthood done him? Not even his 
wife, damn it! understood. And Elizabeth. How beau¬ 
tiful she looked and how still, as she sat quietly in the 
austere chair he had been sketching. A need to have 
one more visit with her before he returned to London and 
his handmade purgatory prompted him to say, “I have 
decided, after all, to remain over week-end.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


219 


Anthony rose lazily to his feet and left the room, his 
eyes looking quite vexed. 

“There is a man who hates me.” 

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said, struggling to overcome 
resentment that Satterlee had stretched his visit at both 
ends. “He might, of course,” she added frankly. “I, 
also, might. Once I believed you were the most wonder¬ 
ful person of our generation. If you had wanted to 
chop my head off, I’d have let you. When I wrote ‘The 
Lily Pond,’ it was you who sang through its pages.” 

“I never knew what the gorgeousness of life was till 
I came to London,” Satterlee spoke brokenly, Elizabeth’s 
words having flooded his soul with bitterness. “It is this 
gorgeousness that I want to show you. I never did any 
real writing till I came here. My nervous system simply 
didn’t exist. I have had to pay the price and it came 
high.” 

“Now you advise me to develop a nervous system?” 

“Damn it! I don’t know!” 

“And the toll?” 

Satterlee looked sharply at Elizabeth. But though 
her voice sounded slightly contemptuous, her face was 
merely grave. Its gravity was slowly chiselling stern 
lines about her eyes and mouth. He flushed slightly and 
said, “One would pay any price for beauty. One 
approaches the skittish goddess in strange ways. Who 
can tell another by what secret road she may be 
reached?” 

Elizabeth’s grey eyes turned dark with some inner 
emotion. Again she seemed to him beautiful. “You are 
like Melancholia,” he said, “the one who stands guard 


220 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


over the sorrows of the fallen. It is useless to tell you 
anything; you know it all.” 

“We both believe,” Elizabeth said, pulling her thoughts 
tardily to the surface, “that one can know beauty only 
when one is free. But aren’t we likely to interpret our 
freedom in terms of license?” 

“In a free world, there can be no license.” 

“Nor licentiousness?” 

“No, if the word connotes an immorality.” 

Elizabeth remained silent, conversation with Satterlee 
having as usual lost its poignancy. He had lived so long 
in an unreal world, made up of drugs and strange imagin¬ 
ings that he seemed to her a grotesque unreality. And 
she, too, asked herself when he had about-faced and gone 
down hill. A rather foolish smile blurred his clear-cut 
features. Senility was threatening him. If he lived to 
be an old man, he would be doddering. Elizabeth let her 
eyelids drop to shut out from Satterlee a knowledge of 
the thoughts that were troubling her. 

“You have lived too much alone: it isn’t good for 
people to live solely unto themselves,” Elizabeth said 
gently, as she rose to meet Anthony who whirled into 
the room in restive mood. Lize and the collie followed 
close at his heels, and the three together were what the 
Pancras sisters called rackety. 

“Have you had chains put on all four wheels?” Eliza¬ 
beth asked. 

With eyes fixed resentfully upon Satterlee, Anthony 
merely nodded. “The afternoon is not half bad,” he said 
vaguely. “The roads are clear. The rains have done 
a mighty good street-cleaning job, the kind to make our 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


221 


Boston fathers cry enviously. May I take Lize with 
me?” he asked abruptly. 

“Both of us,” Elizabeth said with decision. “I don’t 
break engagements.” 

And letting explanation and apology slide, she went 
with Lize out into the cold January day. Soon they were 
on their way to the sand dunes, just a little south and 
west of Harlech, where Anthony was to meet surveyors, 
sent down from his own office, to mark out the precise 
spot where Harlech House was soon to rise and fight the 
battling storms from the north. 


CHAPTER XIV 


Satterlee crossed to the little windows that overlooked 
the main street of Bethgelert and watched Anthony care¬ 
fully tuck Elizabeth and Lize into the car with many soft 
blankets, loose his whirring engine and dart swiftly 
toward Harlech and the golden sand dunes that rimmed 
the North Sea like frozen waves—dead waves, done with 
their writhing, twisted into curling shapes, heaved into 
mounds like dead sea-monsters, curled loose like mam¬ 
moth caterpillars ready to drop. What dire imaginings! 

Satterlee set his teeth and picked up a day-old Times. 
There was a record of a robbery about which the paper 
was facetious. He recalled someone had said the Times 
in its present mood reminded him of an elephant dancing 
on hot bricks. Who had said it? Written or spoken? 
Written or spoken? Hell! What did he care? 

With a shiver, he returned to the fire and began to 
fumble through his pockets. It was then that he remem¬ 
bered Loong Li’s portmanteau with its unguessed treas¬ 
ure. It didn’t take much imagination for him to guess 
what the old Chinaman’s treasure was, he thought cyni¬ 
cally. He knew: it was something he must have—must 
have at any cost. He fell on his knees and held his hands 
close to the flames, fighting an insane instinct to sit down 
on the burning logs and roast like a picked capon. At 
that moment, providentially, it seemed to his supersti¬ 
tious mind, Loong Li closed the house door and shuffled 
222 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


223 


down the grey slate path. The old man would not 
return until he had been to the butcher’s and the post 
office. On his dignified way home, he would stop to leave 
Lucy Penrose her letters if she had any. In any case, 
there was ample time for- 

Satterlee rose undecidedly and wandered about the 
room. He, a robber of servants? The Times was sprawl¬ 
ing across the floor. Folding it tightly, he put it back 
on the low table. Out the window, Moel Hebog appeared 
and then vanished in the thickly floating mists. He 
would like to see Snowdon, but it was the other side 
the house. He might—from Loong Li’s room. That 
would be his excuse if by chance he were discovered 
there. In very truth, how vindictive were Chinamen? 
What knowledge he had of them was gleaned from such 
books as “Lime House Nights,” too commercial in char¬ 
acter to be reliable. Even if Thomas Burke made them 
cruel as the mob on Golgotha hill, even if he told the 
truth with no exaggeration, no future revenge was a 
rag’s weight to his present calamity. 

Loong Li’s room jogged right from the end of a long 
narrow hall. His door stood open. The one window in 
the room faced a great grey rock that rose thirty feet 
steeply upward at the back of the house. Its only fur¬ 
nishings were a cot bed, a porcelain lantern and a wooden 
stool. In a closet, on a shelf, lay Loong Li’s respectable 
clothes and beneath them on the floor stood his port¬ 
manteau. It was made of patent leather such as any 
American might carry for a week-end visit. Satterlee 
lifted the bag; it was not insurmountably heavy. He 
shook it and something slowly moved around inside. A 



224 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


couple of padlocks held firmly two brass bands that 
crossed and ran at right angles about the case. 

As Satterlee stood in the center of the quiet room, he 
knew that he had within his grasp what he most wanted 
in the world. For one moment, only, he hesitated. Then 
with Loong Li’s portmanteau held firmly in his right 
hand, he rushed down the stone stairway and, seizing a 
coat and hat by the house door, dashed out into the open. 
Dr. Philander Williams was passing in Prudence Dodge. 
Satterlee hailed him. “I must get back to London and 
at once. How far can you take me?” 

Dr. Philander, who always had an immediate baby 
case, agreed to take him as far as the station. Luck 
held, for Prudence stopped with an inward splutter a sec¬ 
ond after the local train from Port Madoc rounded the 
cut of Fflamberis Pass and stopped with an admonitory 
note of raucous spleen to hiss at the mountain village and 
pass on. 

There were two changes before Satterlee finally made 
the London express. At one of them, he telegraphed 
something to Elizabeth about a sudden call to London, 
unread letters, a forgotten engagement, for some of it 
would go down, he hoped. 

When he had finally locked himself into his own cham¬ 
bers, he broke open the portmanteau with frenzied 
velocity that sent its contents through the room. Old 
yellow sheets of paper, dark with Chinese characters, 
floated into the air and dropped leisurely onto chair and 
table. Four thinly bound volumes, also in Chinese script, 
fell at his feet. Satterlee shook the bag. Out dropped a 
neatly tied bundle of American copy books, cheap books, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


225 


across which was printed, “Lucky Star Composition, No. 
165 .” 

Satterlee fumbled one with trembling fingers. It fell 
open as a book opens which is in constant use. He read, 
“One can carry off a general from the midst of his army: 
one cannot deprive a man of his resolve to practice 
virtue.” 

“Confucius! God! Damn him! Damn him! Damn 
him!” 

As in a dream, Satterlee put the books back in the port¬ 
manteau. He would appear in Elizabeth’s eyes a com¬ 
mon thief, after a workingman’s money. And for what? 
What business had Loong Li with Confucius, a man of 
exaggerated politeness and profound maxims? Again 
Satterlee turned to the “Lucky Star” copy book and 
read. “Translating him,” he said, “no, writing an essay 
about him or maybe about life, and in English—quaint, 
but not Pidgin. Old man, old man,” he shuddered, 
wringing his hands, “why couldn’t you have been a true 
Chinaman and carried in your pouch what all Chinamen 
know brings happiness and peace?” 

Satterlee gave the black bag a vicious kick. It turned 
over in a top-heavy fashion and lurched open. “Some¬ 
thing else! Curse you!” 

He fell on his knees, tore away the lining and found a 
carefully concealed compartment. “Hello! Old Top,” 
he said. “Old Top, Old Top.” 

A thin pine board yielded to pressure and out fell a 
square iron box, padlocked and sealed. But attached to 
the lock was a key hanging from a short piece of green 
tape. The seals were easily broken; the lid of the box, 


226 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


lifted, disclosed nothing but a heap of rather coarse 
grey ashes. Slowly he poured them on the floor, making 
a pile of them like a miniature pyramid, a pathetic monu¬ 
ment to his sad folly. 

The box contained nothing else. 

He must send the things back, he supposed. She 
would be angry, but not half as angry as she would be 
if he didn’t. And after a short time she would forget. 
The modern world didn’t hug its wrath; it hadn’t time. 
Already, it had let slip the war atrocities and perhaps 
they weren’t so bad as they had been told. Anyhow, 
everything slipped. Rancor, that was it, rancor was out 
of fashion. Peace and good-will- 

Satterlee reined in his thoughts, and wrote, in rapid 
fashion, Elizabeth’s address on a sheet of paper and 
penned a short telegram. “I return the black portman¬ 
teau. I was seeking the true solace of the Oriental and 
found Confucius, confound him.” 

Then he summoned his valet and ordered him to do up 
the mutilated black bag and to send it with the wire 
message to the address he gave him. 

Elizabeth would inevitably know about the theft. She 
alone could understand. Curious how she could under¬ 
stand ! 

Satterlee was unpleasantly aware that his man stood 
watching him. He was saying something about collars, 
linen collars. Satterlee struggled to follow. The lubber- 
head’s voice sounded far away. “But the collars—No 
gentleman,” he was saying, “ever wears the likes of 
them. They are too low and they are pinched at the 
corners.” 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


227 


Satterlee wrenched himself back to the present. “I got 
them,” he said boldly, “for private theatricals.” 

“The last ones, too?” 

“Oh, I wear them every day to grow accustomed to 
wearing them, so when the final night comes I can forget 
I have on anything so ridiculous. They are ridiculous, 
but comfortable. Hell! Today, I lost something good 
out of life!” Satterlee glared at the ceiling. “It was cool 
up there,” he whispered, “but now. A man is swinging 
in the air. His clothes are moulded. That man—that 
man. Hell fire! I once knew that man. Crawling into 
his ears and out of his eyes are monstrous caterpillars. 
Take them off! Take them off! ” he screamed. 

Satterlee’s valet turned swiftly to the phone and called 
for the one man in London who could help his master at 
such times, a man who had a tricky name made to trap 
an honest fellow’s tongue, but a man who never failed in 
a crisis, the great nerve specialist, Doctor Tomassini 
Pontillionni. 


CHAPTER XV 


Having turned sharply left from the Port Madoc road, 
Anthony made for Harlech and the sea. There was a 
stiff wind blowing inland. It caught his breath sharply 
and left him half stifled. The sky was blue, and the 
dunes, tipped here and there with curling snow, were 
gold. Back of the dunes rose Harlech Castle, grey and 
cold, while half lost in the sky shimmered the Snow¬ 
don range in softest purples and violets and indigos. 

“It is utterly lovely!” Elizabeth said as she slid 
happily out of the car which had stubbornly balked the 
queer road. 

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Anthony said in disap¬ 
pointed tones. “Your corner stake is only two rods 
farther on. The men with the flapping ulsters must be 
the surveyors; they are ahead of us.” 

“No, I know already what they will say and how they 
will say it.” 

“But the site.” 

“That is already decided. Not quite on the highest 
point and facing the sea. Clear of trees. We are going 
to plant yews, aren’t we? I should be sorry to cut 
down a tree to make room for a house.” 

“What are you talking about?” Anthony demanded 
with natural Slater suavity. “There aren’t but a few 
wind-blown devils on the entire point. Maybe Nature 
intended to make trees of ’em and forgot.” 

“Ever since we planned Harlech House, I have had 
. 228 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


229 


the oddest, guilty feeling that I owe the North Sea an 
apology! I can’t explain it properly. I have chased my 
feelings into their secret recesses and can hazard no 
explanation. But I feel quite, quite certain we must not 
do anything beastly like destroying trees or blasting 
rocks, or making any sort of a mess.” 

Anthony and Lize would be gone a long time, for they 
had on hand what they considered important business. 
Elizabeth looked far out over the cold water and won¬ 
dered how any human being could imagine that anything 
he had to do was important. She felt that she loved 
best elementary things, for they alone remained un- 
trameled—the sky, the sea, space. Her thoughts swung 
rhythmically as she listened to the pounding surf, and 
Aunt Fan’s serenity of spirit, for an instant, flooded 
her soul. Dead sea grasses switched harshly against her 
face and she bent half caressingly to touch them for she 
found the little things about her oddly companionable. 
To escape the cold winds from the north, she made for 
herself a nest in the sands, between two dunes where a 
clump of grey grasses again switched closely about her. 
These little ghosts of summer had their curiosities! She 
smiled indulgently as she let them play about her face 
and neck. They seemed alive; they were like deeply- 
rooted people—always saying the same thing, very 
important, conscious only of their own sphere of grasses, 
As she lay in the golden sands, looking straight up from 
between swelling dunes to the sky, it seemed strange to 
her that her spirit could ever have been bound by the 
memory of Archibald Satterlee. Until today the idea of 
him had trailed darkly through her life—sometimes hid- 


230 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


den, sometimes in the light, but never wholly out of her 
consciousness. Because of him, life had been more diffi¬ 
cult. He had been a possible avenue to freedom. She 
had come to see herself a little, pale nincompoop, afraid 
to dare all for one glorious hour. Today, she saw the one 
glorious hour with a man like Archibald Satterlee could 
not contain for any woman even the clock sixty minutes. 
Somehow he was spoiled. It was bitter for those who had 
loved him to see him sagging hell-ward. But, had she 
loved him? Had she ever loved anyone besides Aunt Fan 
and Lize? Loved them as she loved the sea and the blue 
spaces between her and eternity? What poet had said 
one moment of glory was worth an eternity of woe? 
There was the after and the after to be reckoned with. 
That was what Archibald Satterlee was suffering from 
now—the attenuated after. She saw his fragile, haunted 
face hovering over the wood fire at the White Wren, and 
shuddered. She recalled the charm and exquisite under¬ 
standing that had once been his and wondered how so 
beautiful a nature could have gone so awry. And then 
she wondered if it had been so beautiful, and then, 
inevitably, she despised her hardness. Even now the 
memory of the early days was agony shot with glory. 
She closed her eyes to shut out pain. The throbbing 
pulse of the sea beat in her ears—the moaning threnody 
of its recessional. There was the inevitable bleakness in 
life, in nature—the same, if we understood. 

What she had actually done, she now saw, was to run 
away with herself. With her as with Archibald Satter¬ 
lee, there would be a long after. She saw herself a soli¬ 
tary creature like the Honourable Gwendolyn—a funny 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


231 


old woman of the sea. Lize would go back, sometime, to 
live with the incomparable clan and if she succeeded well 
enough in her own work to become a celebrity, the 
world would write her down as a feminist, or something 
dreadful of the hour—something that sounded quite 
modern, but wasn’t. Odd! She was naturally less a 
feminist than most intelligent women of her generation. 

After an interval, Elizabeth’s mind traveled to Arch 
and the boys. In spite of herself, she thought of Arch. 
It didn’t seem quite fair that she could be happy without 
him—that her world should be light. Or was she merely 
in a tiny spot of glory, soon to dim to grey—to black? 
She was afraid of going on—on into what? The pushing, 
prodding life that she had learned to hate, no longer 
dogged her and yet what queer duties were waiting to 
stride her and to ride her in the wide spaces ahead? 
And then—the boys? 

Elizabeth sprang to her feet and joined the surveying 
party. 


CHAPTER XVI 


Ledger Wigton secured for himself and Archibald 
Slater and the three boys a log house in the deep pine 
woods that stood on a bluff and faced an undulating line 
of blue mountain ranges, sensed rather than seen, so far 
away were they. Arch, who found himself in a new 
world that kept prodding his imagination and stretching 
his intelligence, rode for days and days with Wigton 
through the marvelous timberlands of Wyoming. Occa¬ 
sionally the two men scared up a bear or a deer, and one 
gunless morning, Arch found himself staring with startled 
eyes into the equally startled eyes of a bull-moose. But 
Wigton’s only business was trees. Gradually, Arch also 
became obsessed with a belief in the imminent need of 
their preservation. For four successive days, they put 
out forest fires. Three of these had been started by 
campers of too sanguine a nature, but the last by a tramp 
of evil visage. Wigton did not rest until he had the 
man in prison. But the punishment for his crime, he 
thought inadequate. “He should be hanged,” he declared 
emphatically, “tried and condemned.” 

“I can’t see why you didn’t give me a shot at him,” 
Arch complained. 

Wigton looked twice at the lean, high-tempered man 
resting at his side. “Outlawry is precisely what we don’t 
want. Did you ever shoot a man?” 

“Hell, no! But sometimes I believe I’d feel a fired 
sight better if I had,” Arch jerked an awkward Slater 
laugh as he said these words. 

232 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


233 


“Not by a long shot, you would! It isn’t agreeable to 
feel you have left some old coot out bleaching his bones 
in the pine woods. You dream about him nights. The 
dead man always takes a mean advantage.” 

Arch sagged loosely on a carpet of pine needles and 
closed his eyes. This was one of the new things he had 
learned, how to rest on a long trail. The man he would 
be happier to have dead was not an old coot, nor did he 
have what the world called an evil visage. But he let 
the memory of him slip from his inner consciousness as 
he stared up and up the reddish brown bole of a straight 
yellow pine, until his eyes rested on its long green 
needles shining silvery white against a scrap of sky that 
now and then appeared as the branches lifted and moved 
sideways in a slow but evenly blowing wind. 

In a few hours, now, he would be back to the log house 
and the boys, and in less than a week, to the only town 
within a radius of five hundred miles where he felt safe 
in putting the boys in school. There would be letters 
when he got back, letters almost positively from his 
mother and Julianna and Anthony, and one also, maybe, 
from Lucy Penrose and Lize; letters about Elizabeth, not 
from her, but about her. He would have to read them. 
Again, Arch let his eyes travel slowly up the trunk of 
the yellow pine, to its dark needles, and so to the light. 
Even now white anger burned in his heart when he 
thought of Elizabeth. Her four children ought to have 
satisfied her. They were enough for anyone’s happiness. 
He had learned to count the hours away from his sons as 
just so much lost happiness. 

If it hadn’t been for the children, Elizabeth’s right to 


234 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


leave him would be incontestable. He had been brutal. 
But she knew he loved her—and she had the boys. If he 
could have chosen his sons from the whole world of boys, 
he would have taken his own. It was not difficult to 
forgive Elizabeth for leaving him, but to abandon her 
children—Arch turned away from Wigton, who was 
snoring off his fatigue, and clinched his hands in agony. 
Who could teach them now the things a mother teaches 
her sons—the innumerable little things that sum up into 
a fairly staggering whole? After Elizabeth, the women 
of his clan seemed cold and lacking in imagination. Even 
yet, the three boys confidently expected her back; they 
had fixed Christmas for the date of her return, their 
grandmother, or more likely Anne Pendleton, having told 
them this comfortable fairy tale. Well, he would have 
to tell them she was never coming back. 

The man Archibald Slater wanted to see dead, bleach¬ 
ing his bones in the Wyoming woods, or anywhere else on 
the globe, was Archibald Satterlee. Not that he believed 
one word of Julianna’s fiction. He knew Elizabeth better 
than his sister knew her. Just the same it wouldn’t be 
safe for Satterlee to come his way. He hated him. He 
hated him with a bitter and unreasonable hatred, merely 
because Julianna had dared to mention his name in con¬ 
nection with Elizabeth’s. And if Julianna, then the 
others, the entire damnable Slater tribe, and so the world. 

A foot-long pine cone lazily loosed its moorings and 
dropped swiftly down onto Wigton’s chest. But its fall 
failed to disturb the sleeping man. Arch let himself slide 
softly down into a dark hollow between two trees, where 
he felt completely alone. He and his brothers, he was 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


235 


aware, had been trained in a different school from most 
men of their generation. He had been taught to put duty 
ahead of pleasure, or to find pleasure in duty, and to be¬ 
lieve the only freedom allotted man came through obedi¬ 
ence to law, that law was natural. The word duty, as 
his mother pronounced it with faith and reverence, still 
sounded beautiful in his ears. Her doctrines did not 
touch him, had never touched him, and her faith was 
childish in its simplicity; and yet in spite of his own 
somewhat complicated philosophical outlook, he depended 
upon her teachings beyond reason. Through her he had 
learned to see ahead of the present passionate moment to 
a future quite as poignant, quite as easily made drab and, 
by effort only, made reasonably good. To know a thing 
was right, was final as far as his mother was concerned. 
Such a creed made for a noble, though necessarily narrow 
life. But moral appeal failed to touch Elizabeth. She 
was, in essence, marvelously good and patient, even and 
forbearing. But she despised goodness in itself. She 
scorned the homely virtues. At least, she thought she 
scorned them. Manners, she argued, were more important 
than morals, present happiness than a vague, lasting 
peace. She was, when it seemed necessary to her, an 
artistic liar and preferred being lied to, to the brutalities. 
She always told him the truth, she said frankly, because 
she knew he preferred the truth. She was nice, even 
prudish in her ways of living, because, she once told him, 
she knew he liked her better that way. In spite of her 
words, spoken to disprove a priggish attitude, he knew 
her to be at heart almost as much of a Puritan as his 
mother. 


236 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Arch looked steadily up into the singing pines, while 
his mind drifted back into the past. He remembered 
Elizabeth in her more sensitive moods and saw himself a 
crude and awkward husband. All the Slaters were brutal. 
Even the women were strong-willed, eternally fighting 
things to a finish. Elizabeth said once that Fenway 
House ought to be called Battle Abbey. Whereupon 
Julianna had declared that Elizabeth had no historical 
sense. There must have been something exasperating in 
his wife’s expression, for Judy had gone on to say that the 
idea was absurd and Elizabeth perfectly ridiculous. 

Arch dug a cone out of the dense mat of needles upon 
which he was lying and determinedly fixed his mind on 
the bearable present. The cone was about fifteen inches 
long and possibly five in diameter. Once it had been 
green with a purple bloom on the side toward the sun. 
Now it was a golden-brown shell empty of seeds. The 
cone, which was at least three years old, had fallen from 
a sugar pine near at hand, a pinus lambertiana. With an 
ever recurring wonder, Arch let his eyes travel up its 
two hundred feet of purple trunk to its almost perfect 
top, storm-driven, neither eastward nor westward, but 
round and symmetrical, a crown, seventy feet in diame¬ 
ter, poised lightly against the sky. This lambertiana was 
what Wigton would record a perfect specimen, somehow 
making a mathematical fact of the monarch of the forest. 

“Now who shall arbitrate?” Arch asked himself 
fiercely, as he watched the tree swaying and straining 
toward the blue. “Ten men love what I hate.” The 
words ran through his brain till they were his. “Ten who 
in ears and eyes match me . . .” Each branch of the 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


237 


tree, he noticed, shot forth with character and individ¬ 
uality, but together they made an evenly balanced circle 
that swayed lightly in the air. Maybe Wigton had 
chosen the best job there was, a better job than writing 
essays on the evil proclivities of the New Englander, or 
publishing books. The money side of his business was 
making of him a pickpocket. 

Late in the afternoon, the two men returned to the log 
house. There was such a keen light in Arch’s eyes that 
one of the ranch boys surmised a mineral find, and 
dogged his steps for many days. The three boys were 
waiting for him with presents of arrows they had made. 
And there were the all-competent Anne Preston and the 
letters as he had anticipated. There was no word from 
Elizabeth, nor did he want any. Yet he was eternally 
missing her. That was the nuisance of having been mar¬ 
ried. It was a way of living difficult to get over with its 
habits of dependency and intimate companionship. 

A week later, Arch set out for the big town and the 
perfect school, where his sons were to be trained to be 
good American citizens. And soon he settled into the 
first round of his own chosen work. As he couldn’t 
accomplish much without political influence, he was half 
inclined to become a citizen of Wyoming and, following 
his mother’s advice, take an active part in state affairs. 


CHAPTER XVII 


Arch had to an unusual degree the power of accom¬ 
plishment. Just as when, in the earlier days, he bent his 
energies to the converting of a high-brow magazine that 
dabbled somewhat too saucily with politics and morals 
into a sensible and forceful weekly that stood for well- 
defined democratic principles, so now he gave himself 
wholly to the mastery of the problems that confronted 
the department of forestry. If he was baffled by the still 
undefined limitations of this field, he was convinced of 
its importance and happy in devoting his powers to its 
mastery. 

Wyoming people, he liked. He enjoyed the easy com¬ 
panionship of the men in the open. Their world and his 
were no more at variance than his inner life was at 
variance with that of the clan, or of the men in the 
New York publishing house, where he had worked for 
fifteen years. More and more he saw his native instincts 
excluding him from intimacies. Most people didn’t talk 
about the things he was interested in. For recreation he 
read the Greek classics, preferring them in the original. 
One evening, at a dinner party, he accidentally referred 
to a passage from Aristophanes and the girl by his side 
cried aloud, “Listen, people, I am sitting by a wonder- 
man who reads Greek in Greek!” The crowd about the 
table shouted their amusement and disbelief. 

238 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


239 


“Imagine reading Greek for pleasure! I am intrigued,” 
his hostess said, turning her pretty bright eyes toward 
Arch, who sat, handsome and aloof, not far off. Mr. 
Slater seemed to her a god descended for a while to live 
with mortals and she flushed slightly as she met his cool, 
quiet glance. “You know,” she fluttered, “I am not 
educated, really. Fm just rich. I haven’t learned to 
scorn the glitter of silver and gold or to despise good 
things to eat. I adore wallowing in the fats of the land. 
There are many of them and they haven’t always been 
accessible. Oh! I am an awfully common little 
thing.” 

“Are you?” Arch said enigmatically. For it appeared 
equally rude to assent to the truth of this remark or to 
deny it, and his hostess was waiting for him to say 
something in reply. 

In the proper place the guests of this dinner party dis¬ 
cussed Mr. Slater, decided that he was subtle and felt 
themselves to be afraid of him. His social equipment, 
they acknowledged, was different from theirs, not 
superior, surely, nor less kind, but more supple, and while 
unassuming, startlingly assured. And yet, was he 
unkind? What could the most good-natured of guests 
say to a hostess who declared herself common? 

And Arch, as in the East, having found himself an 
alien at social entertainments, dined mostly at home 
where Miss Preston’s admonitory voice became very tire¬ 
some. He wanted Elizabeth to read to or to talk at while 
he ate. It seemed snobbish to exclude the Preston, espe¬ 
cially now that his oldest son was allowed at table. 
Elizabeth used to send things up to her on a tray and he 


240 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


had grumbled at her arrogance. There was no longer 
any opportunity even to know what one was eating, for 
while Godkin talked a steady river about his accom¬ 
plishments at school, Miss Preston talked almost as 
steadily, correcting his manners one minute and his 
morals the next. He wondered why. For after ten years 
of admonition, Godkin still licked his butter off his 
bread, still made soup of his ice cream before tasting it, 
still did all the things he ought not to do and did the 
others. On Sundays, when the trio were present at the 
noon dinner, there was pandemonium. He couldn’t re¬ 
member Sunday dinners being that way when Elizabeth 
was home. His youngest son, Greenleaf, still employed 
baby talk with Miss Preston, which she apparently 
adored, but which he found extremely distasteful. The 
boy’s will was disproportionate to his size. He had it in 
him to be more terrifying than Caligula and equally 
cruel. 

Years ago, Arch had believed the responsibility of 
training the boys had fallen upon him, as Elizabeth was 
vague about morals and inherited obligations. Accord¬ 
ingly with exaggerated emphasis, he had laid down the 
laws by which they were to be guided, making himself 
unequivocally responsible for their morals, while Anne 
Preston looked out for their cleanliness and general 
physical comfort. This arrangement, in his mind, had 
excluded Elizabeth. He was dumbfounded to discover 
what Elizabeth’s absence actually meant in the daily 
life of the children. He had rarely seen her correct 
or discipline the boys, and yet without her, there were 
frequent and disturbing riots in the home life. To his dis- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


241 


taste, he found he had to punish his sons at discourag- 
ingly close intervals. As he never permitted himself to 
chastise the day of the crime, lest he act in anger, the 
home outlook became gloomy. 

Christmas holidays he took the three boys and the 
painful Preston, now thoroughly scandalized that she 
was to be the only woman of the party, and joined Ledger 
Wigton in camp. Arch would again have chosen the deep 
woods south of Yellowstone Lake, but Wigton was firm 
in holding to a ranch accessible to a railroad and fur¬ 
nished with what he called the softer necessities of life. 
In his mind, they did not include a woman. But when 
Arch darkly spoke of the many takings-off and puttings- 
on, the fearful process of dressing the inadequate young, 
he welcomed Anne Preston as something precious in a 
curious cosmos over which man could never be wholly 
master. Prompted by a memory of his fluffy mother 
from whose care he had fled at the age of fourteen, when 
he took over the buying of his winter suits and all mas¬ 
culine accessories, Wigton made the one room which did 
not have to be used as a public thoroughfare, as com¬ 
fortable a nest as he could for young Caligula and his 
slave. 

The slave, who appreciated the difference, appeared at 
a new best and Arch feared a late blossoming. 

The two men began immediately making tree-records 
and Arch developed what he believed to be a new 
theory about the wind-resisting power of the yellow pines, 
founded, Wigton assured him, on his ignorance of soils. 
Just the same, he was glad to experiment with his theory 
and he set doggedly to work. For after all there was 


242 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


nothing like tree-instinct, and Arch seemed to have been 
born with it. 

Immediately, also, the boys fell into line, following 
with a relieving and silent enthusiasm, the footsteps of 
their own special guide. “They are no longer a nuisance,” 
Anne said with a rasp in her voice, “because they are kept 
busy. Quite naturally, they miss their mother. She was 
always on hand to supply a new interest, when other 
things failed.” 

When Wigton returned one night to camp, Anne 
greeted him with a youthful gaiety that made Arch won¬ 
der how old the old thing actually was. He thought back 
to her advent when Godkin was a baby. He couldn’t see 
that she had changed any. She seemed to him eternally 
thirty-five. She was tall and thin with good grey eyes 
and rather pretty brown hair that dulled one’s first im¬ 
pression that God had created her face for an axe. Any¬ 
thing, of course, that concerned the welfare of his sons, 
such as the age of their governess, he had a right to 
know. But remembering something his mother had 
once said to him about women who had passed their first 
youth, he decided he dared not to put the question to her 
pointblank. Quite cunningly, he thought, he devised a 
way to find out. At the clamorous Sunday dinner, he 
started the subject of birthdays, always an exciting fam¬ 
ily subject, for there never failed'to be one looming in the 
near future. And as Arch had foreseen, Greenleaf said to 
Miss Preston, “How old are you, dewest? Dewest, how 
old are you?” 

Anne Preston flushed and said, “You want to know my 
age, Greenleaf? I am thirty-five.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


243 


And Arch knew precisely what he had always known, 
Miss Preston was the conventional age of all governesses, 
thirty-five. 

“I should have given you at least ten years less than 
that,” Wigton said admiringly. 

Then Anne surprised both men by saying, “When I 
first took a position as governess to take charge of 
Godkin, I decided to be thirty-five. It is a convenient 
and lasting age. To be strictly frank, I was too young to 
be trusted with the training of even an infant mind, but 
I wanted the work. Even now I am not entirely thirty- 
five.” 

Arch felt odd, counting the thirty-fives, fore and aft, 
that were Anne’s fate. But she again startled him. “I 
would have lied more heinously than I did, for the 
privilege of being near the author of The Lily Pond’,” 
she said, with a stormy burst of passion. “And I will 
never abandon her children, even if you lead me into 
stranger places than this. I counted all along on Christ¬ 
mas. And you haven’t even heard from her!” Anne 
stopped short in a spasm of fright at her own daring. 

“There will be mail today,” Arch said evasively. 

But Anne Preston left the table in a paroxysm of tears 
and Greenleaf set up a sympathetic howl. “I want my 
mother, dewest. Dewest, I want my mother.” 

The mail came late the next morning, brought to the 
ranch by two men who drove over from the station on a 
sledge piled high with Wigton’s second week’s supplies. 
They reported heavy snows swinging down from the 
north and hurried to cover. 

The first package that Arch opened was from his 


244 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


mother. It was not his turn for a present. Since her 
children had grown to maturity, Madame Slater made 
them Christmas presents in rotation, thus without flurry 
or exhaustion, presenting a child, once in four years, with 
something worth preserving. Because life had dealt him 
a blow, his mother evidently considered him out of line. 
Arch was annoyed. Within the outside wrappings of the 
package, marked fragile, there was a note. 

“I had this plaque made for you, when Elizabeth and 
the children were last in Boston. John Boulier, whose 
work I hope you agree with me in thinking very fine, has 
made an exquisite and well-balanced group. For some 
time I hesitated about its disposal. After all, it seems 
reasonable to give this to you. The likeness of Godkin 
and Little Lize is exceptionally good.” 

Arch tore open the final wrappings to find a portrait 
of his wife in her rare fireside mood with Greenleaf 
on her lap and the three other children grouped around 
her. With hands that shook with a new rage against 
Elizabeth who had deserted, Arch placed the plaque on 
the blackened mantel, thick with powder horns and tackle 
and tobacco jars. It pleased the household. The chil¬ 
dren immediately thought it was meant for them and 
Miss Preston worshiped it in passing. The nuisance 
was she kept passing. 

Then came the great storm from the north. Wigton 
and the guides made the house taut, like a ship, closed 
the huge fireplace, now nothing but a funnel for the wind, 
and built great wood fires in two sheet-iron stoves that 
stood waiting for just such an occasion, till their sides 
were red hot and the circle of people about them drew 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


245 


away to escape their intense heat. Toward evening, they 
heard a long tearing shriek followed by a curious whining 
sigh, a crashing that seemed to fill all space, a second 
prolonged sigh, subsiding into a gentle swish lost in the 
turmoil of the winds. 

“The tree we were looking at yesterday, the one by the 
spring house, is down,” Wigton said. “If it could have 
been mended it might have lived another hundred years 
and then built some one a house. It will remain where it 
is, I reckon, and rot away its usefulness.” 

Before the end of the following day the storm had sub¬ 
sided, but fine, dry snow kept insidiously falling for the 
rest of the week, till path and roadway were lost beyond 
finding. To the complete joy of the boys, their only 
means of getting anywhere was by snowshoes or skis. 
“The weather was expressly made for them,” Anne Pres¬ 
ton maintained cheerfully, “as of course it should be, 
holiday time.” 

Remarks like these, Arch let pass without comment, 
fully realizing that he and Anne disagreed when it came 
to Divine Providence quite as positively as on the 
amount of red a spinster of thirty-five should sport for 
decorative purposes. Lately she had been wearing some¬ 
thing around her long thin neck that looked like a 
rooster’s wattles, which he caught Wigton admiring. 

Arch was the only one of the party glad to return to 
civilization. For the first time he was getting uninter¬ 
rupted companionship with his boys; what he had always 
longed for and blamed Elizabeth for not cherishing. 
“Too much ham and eggs,” he admitted as he stole 
away to the baggage car on the return trip, the only 


246 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


haven where he could read in uninterrupted peace. Pull¬ 
ing a dog-eared Aristophanes out of his jacket pocket, he 
cast his troubles aside, only occasionally returning to the 
present sufficiently to maintain a rather rigid attitude so 
as not to disturb a bundle carefully balanced on his 
knees, the bas-relief of Elizabeth and the children. As 
he moved his legs cautiously from time to time, it never 
occurred to him to put his package on the floor. Fie 
needed his wife or his mother to tell him how to take the 
everyday steps of living. 

The boys were two days late to their school. Arch was 
surprised at the stiff way the head received his apologies, 
offered merely as a form. Children, he learned, must not 
come back late after a holiday. Tardiness was not tol¬ 
erated. The perfect school was firm. And Godkin, when 
he learned that his delay greatly endangered his chance 
of acquiring a desired medal, became instantly glum 
and ill-natured. Fie rushed off in a rage for his form, 
but not before he had kicked the school door a blow that 
sent him flat on the floor. 

Arch walked away from the school with a weak feeling 
playing about his knees. Already the head master had 
laid a compelling hand on his two sons. And who was 
the head? What sort of dogma was he feeding them? 
Through the blood of how many generations of Slaters 
would his teachings trickle? And anyhow, what did he 
want his sons to believe? When must they begin to face 
the brutalities; or had they already begun? One fact 
alone was certain. He would not spare them their disci¬ 
pline, if he had it in his power to spare them, and of 
course, he hadn’t. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


247 


Arch realized that he had been trimmed to so con¬ 
ventional a mould in his own prep-school days that the 
knowing could tell from what New England school he 
came. He saw himself a slick example of what both his 
school and his college aimed to turn out. He stood a 
sign-post for New England culture, a fairly clear one, he 
was conscious. For he was physically strong with few 
acquired vices and possessed of a cutting intellectual 
quality and an indefinable austerity which he had 
inherited from his mother’s people. It had been the 
other side of him, a submerged poetic side that had loved 
Elizabeth. But he felt his mother’s blood coursing freely 
through his veins, conquering his other instincts, making 
him hard and unmalleable like the granite rocks of the 
state from which he had sprung. 

Gradually the story of Lucy Penrose sifted down to 
Arch. It came as a toppling shock. It made him fear for 
his boys as he had never feared before. He thought of 
Lize with an unreasonable ache in his heart. He feared 
for his mother, for Elizabeth. For, if Lucy Penrose, why 
not the others? How dared he to hope that the others 
would be singled out for safety? 

As Arch sat in his all-too-golden oak library, learning 
his chosen tree-craft, he grew nervous. Whenever the 
telephone rang, late in the night, or whenever he heard 
the swift slap of running feet on the pavement, he was 
convinced something dreadful had happened either to the 
boys or to Elizabeth. He thought they were dead. He 
ascribed his nerves to an empty house and to long, unin¬ 
terrupted silences. If there were times when a wife bored 
a man there were others when she furnished most comfort- 


248 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


ing companionship. The one remedy he knew for his 
trouble was work. Of their own initiative he and Wigton 
were preparing a series of lectures on the great trees, with 
stereopticon views, to be delivered in the country towns 
in Wyoming and the adjoining states. That was one 
way, they believed, to educate public opinion. To make 
the talks popular there was to be a band and afterwards 
a smoker with an opportunity for discussion. Arch also 
found work in an humble capacity on a town committee 
whose business it was to protect public parks, glad to get 
any sort of opening for what he had come to believe a 
great undertaking. 

And then one night, when he was busy writing, the 
telephone rang peremptorily—just as he had expected, 
Arch told himself with a pang as he took down the 
receiver. There was a telegram from Boston that needed 
repeating. It was a summons from Julianna. Madame 
Slater had been in a street accident. Her condition was 
critical; would he come at once? 


CHAPTER XVIII 


There was a naked procession, the choir boys, the 
clergy, the coffin borne aloft by six pall-bearers, the 
mourners. In family groups, the husbands and the wives 
with their children marched slowly down the dim central 
aisle. The women’s heads swayed uncomfortably in their 
long black veils, the men’s faces were white and expres¬ 
sionless, while the flocks of little children looked scared 
and important. Arch was glad he, had left his sons in 
school. He was alone; he was the only one of the clan 
who was alone except old Aunt Mary. Grim and gaunt, 
she stalked close upon his heels. Her worn and wrinkled 
face wore a derisive expression. Her old brown bonnet, 
with grosgrain strings tied primly under her chin and 
tilted slightly back from the line of her Roman nose, 
shouted aloud her firm disapproval of pomp and cere¬ 
mony, like her clumping presence. He wondered why 
life had dimmed for him her clear-cut personality. On 
this occasion, he remembered, Julianna had intended 
Aunt Mary for him. But Aunt Mary, as usual, had pre¬ 
ferred to play a lone hand. 

There was a stop in the procession. Arch was tall 
enough to look over the imposing clan of Slater to where 
his mother —his mother was being placed on a purple vel¬ 
vet catafalque surrounded with wreaths of orchids and 
lilies and roses ... his own red roses stared boldly up 
at him from their midst. During a pause the choir and 
then the congregation began to sing, “O Mother dear, 
Jerusalem.” As when he was a small boy, he was moved 
249 


250 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


by the gorgeous words. Aunt Mary sang aloud the pas¬ 
sionate lines with a first impatience, as if she, too, were 
clawing at the gates of Paradise with a sort of divine 
frenzy to meet her God. His mind shot back and then 
forward as it raced through the magnificent poem of the 
old monk of Cluny. Then was the time to have lived, in 
the age of faith. One flash of the ecstasy of the ancient 
Cluny who believed in God lighted his soul. 

Arch sat down mechanically on a crimson damask 
cushion in a long pew and mechanically he rose again 
and read printed responses in the service for the burial of 
the dead. And then he knelt while the congregation 
prayed and said Amen when the Bishop paused in 
breathy expectancy. His mother was dead. That fact 
was beyond his mastery. She had been killed by a small 
car that skidded over to the sidewalk and knocked the 
life out of her. “Amen,” Arch said with a shudder. He 
failed to visualize his mother, flat on the pavement, dead, 
the quickly gathering crowd of . . . just people. She had 
fallen face downward, her calm blue eyes . . . O God! 

He lost the next response. Again he rose to his feet 
and steadied himself by gripping the rim of the seat in 
front of him. And so standing, the slowly paced words 
and solemn hymns passed over him from east to west, 
as the dawn winds passed over his shack in the pine 
forest, half sensed but not realized. 

The day drifted by, freighted. Late in the afternoon 
there was a meal in Fenway House. A plate of hot 
steak was placed before Arch. He ate hungrily. After a 
time of embarrassed silence, the other people at the table 
followed his bold example. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


251 


Julianna, who had the temporary management of the 
house, put Arch in what was still known as Elizabeth’s 
room. Here, Stephen came to see him, before going to 
bed. He had important news. His mother had left the 
Georgian mansion with all its grand fixings to Arch and 
Elizabeth, with the request that they keep up the tra¬ 
ditions of the family for the sake of the oncoming 
generations. She also left to him, in trust, Anthony’s 
share of her property. “I know this to be the truth,” 
the oldest son ended acridly, “for she made me make the 
will.” 

Arch’3 mind worked wearily over these obligations, 
until he deliberately shut them out and let his thoughts 
return to his mother. 

Two great gates had clanged shut and where there had 
once been light and sympathy, there was dark. 


CHAPTER XIX 


And then one night, Arch asked himself what seemed a 
preposterous question, “Shall I send for Elizabeth?” 

There had been a space in the turmoil of the last 
strange week when he had forgotten her, when his mind 
had dwelt solely on his mother and her perplexing will 
with its far-reaching possibilities that so deeply con¬ 
cerned his own life. The cool sweetness and towering 
strength of his mother’s dead face silenced forever any 
reproach he had felt for her tenacities—her pride in 
family—her absurd reverence for inherited manners and 
customs, which seemed to him merely things of a day 
and so negligible. And they were things of a day. They 
had been that with her, too, the obvious outside shreds, 
the connections that held society together. In reality 
there had been nothing petty about his mother, no con¬ 
scious self-sacrifice. She was too positive a character for 
that. There were, he saw now, certain things in life she 
wanted wholly, and for their attainment she had bent 
the force of her strong nature, fiercely sometimes, per¬ 
sistently always. It was the family she fought for. She 
believed that only through the family could civilization 
be maintained. And now, she asked him to carry on her 
work—him and Elizabeth. 

The intense pride that had made it impossible for 
Arch to write to Elizabeth had passed. He had a right to 
demand her return. He had a right to cross the sea, 
lay violent hands on her and bring her back. His mother 
252 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


253 


had willed it. But could he trust the fierce anger that 
still smouldered in his soul? The law is wise in not 
countenancing a man’s carrying on his person a pocket 
pistol or a bowie knife. And yet, he knew if Elizabeth 
came back to him and their life could be as it once was, 
if . . . Arch sprang from his bed and walked across the 
room overmastered by a sudden fierce emotion that shook 
him to action. “If . . . ‘O God have mercy upon us, 
Christ, have mercy upon us, God have mercy upon us.’ ” 

The words of the prayer book coursed through his 
mind in throbbing agony. Once before he had heard 
them at the burial service of his father. He was a young 
boy when his father died, but even now he remembered 
how through the long hours of the day his mother had 
smiled and smiled, while the others who gathered about 
in black bunches wept. Both times it had seemed to 
him that life had stopped, and he an atom, had choked 
back upon himself—telescoped his own identity. 

While the fierce east wind blew in on Arch, disre¬ 
garded, he counted over the clan. He saw his elder 
brother, a moral wreck; Anthony, a man of genius, but 
uncertain in purpose; Julianna, the best of whom was 
her inelastic good-nature; himself, damnable. And they 
were the flowers of his mother’s abnegations. . . . 

And now his mother had asked that he—he and Eliza¬ 
beth—take over Fenway House and uphold the family 
and traditions. But Elizabeth had no respect for family 
traditions, or comprehension of the laws that sustained 
them, or love for the life which they imposed. She de¬ 
spised what his mother held most dear. And yet, his 
mother, whose farsight had always held his respect, had 


254 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


asked Elizabeth to fill her place. Destiny seemed to be 
shouting to him, “Next! Next!!” 

Arch laughed aloud, hit his body, now numb with cold, 
against something hard near the fireplace and realizing 
his condition, plunged back to cover. He asked himself 
why his mother had taken so much trouble with Fen¬ 
way House, and the non-essentials. For the first time 
he suspected her of hidden purposes. He recalled the 
trouble she had taken to get Elizabeth’s bed, with its 
fluted posts and delicately painted cornice, decorated 
with garlands of pink and yellow roses, or was it holly¬ 
hocks? Curious! Things he believed to be a matter of 
indifference to his mother as they were to him. But 
things made for Julianna’s happiness and the furnish¬ 
ing of the house had kept Anthony almost out of mis¬ 
chief for two years—almost! And now Elizabeth was 
keeping Anthony almost out of mischief by letting him 
build her a house somewhere near Harlech Castle. Why 
in the devil should Anthony be eternally kept out of mis¬ 
chief? He had not liked his last letter to his mother 
which he had found on her desk, unread. There was too 
much about Elizabeth in it, and solitary rides along 
wind-swept roads and happy evenings spent in the White 
Wren. For his part, he could not see why, after a woman 
was once married, certain experiences were not closed to 
her. 

Arch shivered down beneath a pile of soft woolen 
blankets, feeling himself a bounder to distrust Anthony. 
The wind was ripping to shreds the white window shade 
near his bed, but he couldn’t stop it; he couldn’t stop 
anything. He couldn’t even get out of bed and pick the 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


255 


yellow and pink roses on the cornice, or were they holly¬ 
hocks? Confound them; His mother kept pushing him 
beneath a weight of coverlets and telling him not to 
expose himself to the cold. In any case, Anthony had 
already given Elizabeth all the flowers she cared about. 
Outrageous! His bedchamber door opened ever so softly 
and Julianna in a yellow silk kimono drifted toward him. 
She placed a pot of hot coffee with its accessories on a 
small table by his bed, and leaned down to kiss him, the 
way his mother used to do when he lived at home. It 
was a good custom, he thought, as he watched his sister 
close the windows and even up his bedroom slippers and 
the pumps he had cast from him the night before. “Your 
room is cold as ice,” she said in her matter-of-fact voice. 
“I will send old John to build a fire.” 

The evening of that day Arch wrote to Elizabeth and 
asked her to come home. 


CHAPTER XX 


Arch decided to remain in .Boston until he received an 
answer to his letter to his wife. As executor to his 
mother’s estate, there were many things to be attended to. 
These he carried through with his customary precision. 
He found his mother’s business in admirable order. To 
advertise for debts was to perpetrate a joke, the family 
lawyer said. There was more money than any of the 
children had suspected. Her divisions were equal; her 
bequests generous. The only possible point of disagree¬ 
ment was the disposal of Fenway House and its contents. 

Arch was sorry that his mother had left no journal or 
intimate records of any sort. His curiosity had been 
keenly stirred to know more of her inner life. She 
was a natural psychologist. At least, she was almost 
scientific in the way she analyzed and classified her 
children’s emotions. He first approached his mother’s 
writing desk with a feeling of sacrilege. But the old 
cherry secretary contained no mementoes. She had pre¬ 
served none of her children’s letters. The pigeon-holes 
were neatly filled with various kinds of strong white 
writing paper, ink-pots, pens, a dozen excellent blotters, 
a few unanswered letters, two bank-books, a ledger-like 
account of the family, merely dates of births, deaths, 
marriages and finally two neatly tied packages of photo¬ 
graphs, one containing prints of her children, the other, 
of her grandchildren. If there was any record anywhere 
that revealed the heart of his mother it was in the quoted 
line written quite lately, he imagined, on the margin of 
256 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


257 


her perpetual calendar, “To know all is to forgive all.” 

After luncheon of the fourth day, Arch found himself 
alone with Julianna in the imposing library. Superim¬ 
posing, he thought better described its conscious gran¬ 
deur, for every piece of furniture in the room knew its 
own value. Arch turned his eyes away from the wal¬ 
lowing leather chairs, and looked distrustfully at his 
sister. He felt that Judy had something she especially 
wanted to say. She was rather agitated. She blushed 
violently and tears came into her eyes. Her skirts 
seemed unnecessarily short for a woman with legs the 
shape of nail kegs. Moreover, her stockings wrinkled 
considerably and her shoes were not tidy. Her flesh 
seemed to be pushing through the few garments that half 
covered it, and they were new garments, too. With a 
conscious effort, Arch pulled himself out of a critical 
attitude, unworthy of the head of the house, and bent a 
benignant smile upon his sister. 

“Goodness, Arch!” Julianna cried. “Look natural, if 
you can. I don’t know what all this paternal business 
means.” 

“What is the trouble?” Arch asked, ignoring his sis¬ 
ter’s remark. 

“Don’t get huffy! Elizabeth!” Julianna blurted. 

“Well?” 

“I have never mentioned even her name to you, once, 
since she abandoned her three boys. I have been awfully 
sorry for you. I haven’t even dared to say that. Now, 
that we are at last alone, I’m going to speak.” 

“I expect Elizabeth home,” Arch interrupted hastily. 
“I have written her to come.” 


258 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“You would take her back!” Julianna’s eyes flashed 
like her mother’s. 

Arch looked at his sister interestedly. She seemed a 
much finer piece than he had imagined. “I want her 
back,” he said, “and Mother wanted her back: she kept 
the road open.” 

“But it is impossible. Everybody knows that she went 
to London to join Archibald Satterlee.” 

“I know you thought she loved him. The whole Slater 
world thought she loved him, and possibly, Elizabeth 
thought the same. But,” Arch turned fiercely upon his 
sister, “I know she didn’t.” 

“You are wholly wrong,” Julianna spoke angrily. 
“Why did she go about the house weeping, the entire week 
before she married you, if her heart weren’t breaking? 
Evelyn Fordyce said she acted like a butterfly caught 
in a net. Archibald Satterlee kept sending her tele¬ 
grams, two a day, sometimes, in a ridiculous cipher any 
child could read. One came the very hour she went to 
church.” 

“I am tired of hearing about those damning telegrams. 
Evelyn broadcast their iniquity and they have come 
back to me by wireless for ten years now. One fact is 
certain. If Elizabeth had wanted Satterlee, she would 
have taken him.” 

“But she couldn’t! He was married.” 

“That wouldn’t go far with Elizabeth.” 

“Arch!” 

“You see with you and me, when a woman marries, 
that experience is closed to her. However, we are not 
modern. You aren’t an idiot, Judy. You know that 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


259 


most people we have anything to do with look upon 
marriage as one incident in a complicated existence. 
Women are loyal nowadays not from principle but from 
choice. The only loyalty I see about me is accidental 
and might as well be called by some other name. Most 
of the men I know hate their homes and are glad to get 
away from them. It isn’t very encouraging to a woman 
to give up the things she likes to make a sort of innocu¬ 
ous prison for her family—something her family will turn 
about some day and curse her for.” 

Arch brought a long, thin leg up well within the em¬ 
brace of his locked arms and continued with measured 
emphasis, “Now, Elizabeth is straight, not from convic¬ 
tion but because she inherited straightness. The . . . 
romantic side has little appeal for her. I consider that a 
blemish in her character. She is a Greek youth, clear 
cut, frank, intellectual, fine quality, without passion— 
intellectual passion, yes—But there are certain things 
she could never do. She may have been intellectually 
head-over-heels in love with Mr. Satterlee-” 

“Well, maybe you are right,” Julianna’s disbelieving 
voice trailed high and thin on the word right. “Nothing 
you can say will make me believe it,” she added stub¬ 
bornly. 

Arch dropped his cuddled leg and stood shakily on his 
feet. “I will tell you why Elizabeth left me,” he said 
angrily. “I shook her. She knows well enough that if 
she returned to me, I’d likely shake her again. I have 
a horrid temper. You remember. When I am furious, I 
hit out—always have.” 

“Good heavensl” Julianna ejaculated, as she crossed 



260 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the room to the smoking things. She had never smoked 
outside the precincts of her own room. Now that her 
mother was gone, she saw no bar to her favorite 
indulgence. 

“Elizabeth neither swears nor smokes,” Arch said, 
holding tenaciously to her defence. “She flirts. After all, 
it is merely a question of manners and customs, scarcely 
of morals. You are both good women. Sooner or later, 
each one of us finds himself doing a pas seide.” 

Julianna, who felt an appeal for belief in her brother’s 
words, immediately softened. “If the return of Elizabeth 
will make you happy, I hope she returns,” she said almost 
gently and then she fixed her entire attention on her 
cigarette, for Julianna smoked as she ate her food, or 
played bridge, performing but one office at a time, wholly 
unaware of the lighter touch and go that makes of life an 
art. 

To wait patiently day after day for a message from 
Elizabeth was more than Arch could compass. The rest¬ 
less winds, see-sawing up and down the Charles River, 
the suppressed desires of his own nature, the torturing 
loneliness of Fenway House without his mother drove 
him out into the streets. To while away the heavily 
freighted hours he decided to go to Blowmedown. With 
four junctions blocking his direct passage, it was nearly 
a day’s journey to Madame Duncan’s old home. Polly 
Woodis, with her frank smile and interlacing freckles, was 
as she had been; the rest of the old world had changed. 
The collies were gone, gone also was Loong Li—and 
Aunt Fan—and Elizabeth. 

When he reached the upstairs sitting-room, where 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


261 


Aunt Fan’s sewing table still stood, he remembered the 
damnable telegram that had become a family tradition 
and opened the small box, where Evelyn said she had 
placed it. But it was no longer there. A crumpled piece 
of paper, charred at the end, lay in a Pueblo basket on 
the same table with the box. Elizabeth, of course, had 
thrown it in the fire and some malicious person had res¬ 
cued it. Recorded in Evelyn’s bold hands were a series 
of figures and punctuation marks. The message had been 
telephoned over from the village and Evelyn had taken 
it down and then she had told it, whispered it probably 
at night to her two dozen cousins and so to the world. It 
was an easy camouflage, a gauntlet to the curious. But 
the words and the treachery of the man who had sent 
them, he could never forgive. “I wait till you will sit 
with me in the great wide spaces with the daisies and 
the buttercups at our feet.” 

“How silly the cipher had been! Poor devil!” Arch 
thought as he imagined Satterlee’s state of mind on that 
crystalline Christmas Day, more than a decade past. 

Arch set fire to the sentimental message and stamped 
till a few black marks on the hearthstone was all that 
was left. “Poor devil!” he said again, his imagination 
stirred by Satterlee. 

Again in the cold blue air, the frosty brass house key 
burning its mark in his palm, but somehow steadying 
him, he climbed to the white pine by whose roots Aunt 
Fan’s ashes had been placed. A heavy coating of snow 
and ice covered an irregular mound of earth. Pushing 
the snow away, Arch found where he and Elizabeth had 
placed a sealed iron box containing Aunt Fan’s ashes, 


262 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


nothing but an empty hole. Thieves, he thought, and 
then he remembered Loong Li’s passionate devotion to 
Madame Duncan and wondered. 

The next day, when Arch returned to Fenway House, 
he found the message he had been waiting for. “Impos¬ 
sible,” Elizabeth cabled. “Do you need help on your 
work?” 

After all he would have to fetch her. 
decent way, to fetch her. 


It was the only 


CHAPTER XXI 


Dr. Pontillionni, whose quiet nature, beautiful and cool 
like ivory, Satterlee found comforting, had again saved 
his soul from perdition. “It is still within your power,” 
Pontillioni told his patient, “to rescue yourself. This is 
the last time, maybe, I can help you.” The short, blue¬ 
eyed doctor prolonged the ends of his words into music 
as he smiled serenely upon the vilely erring man who was 
before him. 

And the man smiled vaguely in return and murmured, 
“ ‘The quality of mercy is not strained/ ” 

“You guess wrong,” Pontillioni said brusquely. 
“Everything is filtered nowadays. There are dregs.” 

Satterlee urged Pontillionni to take a vacation with 
him in the hill towns of Italy. 

But the doctor, who said he didn’t know what a vaca¬ 
tion meant except Columbus Day, when his reckless com¬ 
patriots made it clear to him, declined with apologies. 
“I was born with eternal youth,” he said as he looked 
away from the man whose arteries, at forty, were already 
hardening. “Life is good,” he added simply. “Why 
spoil—?” His blue eyes deepened for a second as they 
looked straight into Satterlee’s. “It is what you call a 
damn shame to spoil life.” 

Having carelessly slipped into his hip-pocket a case 
that contained divine magic, he started for the door, 
whistling a tune as he went. 

“Tell me,” Satterlee shouted after him, “why don’t you 
263 


264 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


keep on whistling the same tune like most of us damned 
mortals? And why do you drop from the middle of one 
tune into another and still another? Tunes simply shoot 
out of you.” 

Pontillionni smiled as he closed the door between two 
trills. He had given the American a respite: that was 
something, perhaps. A head like Satterlee’s, with clean- 
cut bones and firmly swung jaw, ought to house a soul of 
grit enough to overcome a hateful physical weakness such 
as his. But he could only stand aside and watch him 
dig his grave with his teeth, make his own hell-hole. 

When, later in the morning, he met a famous Ayrshire 
breeder from the north of England, he mystified him by 
saying, “After all, I’d rather take care of the dumb 
brutes than the damn brutes. Yours is the nobler 
work.” 

Satterlee felt that if he could get away from his cham¬ 
bers, where the furniture and the patterns in the curtains 
still writhed, if he could once escape from the sickening 
yellow walls that imprisoned him, he would be quite all 
right. But he was afraid to go alone. His second choice 
of a companion was Elizabeth. If she would join him in 
some hill town, he wouldn’t ask anything of her except 
companionship. 

With less effort than he anticipated, he crossed over to 
his library and seated himself at his shining table. After 
a struggle, he forced himself to push his feet underneath 
where its four legs curled inward like mammoth worms. 
He put his grey hands on the arms of his chair which also 
curled glidingly toward him. After a little, his nervous¬ 
ness passed and he began to write to Elizabeth. He owed 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


265 


her an apology and an explanation. “I have been a 
snide,” he said. Satterlee found apologies rather more 
easy to write than did most men. But when he came to 
the Italian project, he wrote with dead stops between his 
sentences, choosing his words with delicacy and with 
accuracy. 

He felt quite certain that Elizabeth, when she knew the 
true circumstances, would come. He felt so certain that, 
when he had sealed and directed his letter to the White 
Wren, he wrote a second to his landlord and still a 
third to a girl friend who was a house-decorator. When 
he was away, he would have his rooms done over in 
things that were straight. There were to be no hang¬ 
ings. He loathed things that hung and he loathed 
yellow. 

Fatuously happy over what he had done, Satterlee 
determined to mail his letters in a nearby street box. 
Without help, he put on his overshoes and slipped into 
a loose ulster. But when he reached the hall door he was 
overwhelmed by panic. Where was Loong Li? What 
would the old Chinaman do to him if he fell into his 
hands? He would be murdered. When and where would 
he be murdered? He did not dare to go out into the 
street. 

“Don’t look so gloomy,” he admonished his valet as he 
handed the letters over to him. “We are going South. 
While we are gone, my rooms are to be done over. Only 
the books and what’s in the drawers are to be kept. 
While you are out, get some packing boxes and a couple 
of Gladstones. And—your son has just married, hasn’t 
he? Well, he can have anything he wants out of the 


266 FETTERS OF FREEDOM 

entire suite, everything, except my personal belongings, 
damn them!” 

The man gone, Satterlee opened the long windows 
of his living-room, and went through a dozen setting-up 
exercises some old fogy had prescribed. He thought of 
Pontillionni and tried to whistle as he flung his arms and 
stamped his feet, still reluctant servants of his will. He 
had forgotten what a happy occupation whistling really 
is. Long after he had forgone the energizing thrusts and 
swings, he walked back and forth through his rooms, 
almost a man. Quite easily, he recalled one of the 
Italian’s gay roulades and after determined effort that 
made him trust his treacherous memory, he got back the 
call he once used to announce his approach to Elizabeth. 
Could it be possible that he was the millionth man that 
Pontillionni was haranguing about, the one who might 
drag himself out of a hell-hole? What was the use of an 
old law-breaker like himself making new resolutions, he 
asked. “None, none, none,” his soul shouted bitterly. 

He stopped his countermarchings to look out upon the 
ugly house opposite. It possessed all the marks of 
Georgian royalty. It was dignified, but shallow, pretend¬ 
ing, alien. He saw the stolid pillars that supported the 
ornate porch-door with a new appreciation of its absurd¬ 
ity. “Such effrontery can be met only with derision.” 
Damn it! Where had he read those words? he asked 
himself bitterly. Acute pity for his trailing memory 
flooded him. Tears of self-commiseration were fast 
drowning his resolution, when the pillars of the porch 
slipped their anchorage and writhed upward. Satterlee 
turned swiftly away to find himself facing Loong Li. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


267 


“I am here,” Loong Li said simply. 

Satterlee held hard the silky window hangings, for he 
imagined they would keep him from falling. He could 
not speak. 

“I do not kill you. You are a friend of long standing 
to Mrs. Slater,” Loong Li said as he came close to Sat¬ 
terlee. “I have come for Madame Duncan’s remains.” 

Satterlee’s face turned grey as he remembered the 
coarse ashes he had scattered on the Bokhara rug upon 
which both he and Loong Li were now standing. 

“They are in a square box,” Loong Li explained, 
“sealed with the seal of her mother’s and written upon by 
the sacred characters of her race. Where are they?” 

Satterlee closed his eyes dizzily. When he had opened 
the iron box, the ashes had fallen on the rug. Afterwards 
—afterwards, he had mailed the portmanteau to Loong 
Li—and the ashes—Hell! the ashes had been swept up 
by the charwoman and thrown into the barrel in the base¬ 
ment, likely. How could he answer the Chinaman? His 
mind worked loosely, wavered, then decided upon truth. 

When he was done, the two men looked away from 
each other with cold hatred narrowing their eyes: Loong 
Li with hatred of the man who had profaned the 
sacred shrines of the Duncan family, and Satterlee with 
hatred of life. For Satterlee knew there could be no 
expiation for the ghastly thing he had done. Satterlee, 
whose creed was one of aesthetics, recoiled violently from 
the horrid fact. By his own unbeautiful act, he had 
closed for himself the happy avenues of thought that led 
so pleasantly to the Connecticut hills, to Blowmedown 
and so, inevitably, to Madame Duncan. 


268 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Loong Li believed Satterlee’s story. He knew that the 
friend of long standing was telling the truth. He had not 
lied. Loong Li stood silent, on the rug. He stood there 
for a long time, motionless. It seemed to Satterlee that 
each time the minute hand of the tall clock swung round, 
the Fates added a year to Loong Li’s life. When he 
finally turned to go, he looked a thousand years old. If 
he had not belonged to the yellow race, Satterlee would 
have believed he was dying of a broken heart. “It is not 
you whom I must kill,” the old man muttered as he 
shuffled out of the room. 

Again alone, Satterlee continued his whistlings. He 
tried another of Pontillionni’s elusive tunes. There was 
no gaiety in his music which kept dropping to minor 
thirds in an inartistic way which he abhorred. Suddenly 
he realized he need no longer fear Loong Li. It was a 
horrible accident that had befallen Madame Duncan’s 
remains, but it was silly to sentimentalize over dead 
bones—superstitious and mediaeval. With a cleared con¬ 
science, Satterlee again put on his galoshes and loose 
ulster. This time he went boldly out to the lift and so 
into the cold winter’s day. As he reached the street he 
bumped into Pontillionni. 

“I came around to get you,” the doctor said. “I have 
to motor down to Canterbury. I want to show you what 
an Italian car can do on your good Kent roads. Will you 
come?” 

“If you’ll teach me, on the way, half a dozen of 
your jolly Italian songs,” Satterlee stipulated. “I 
have decided to take up whistling as a world-sorrow- 
antidote.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


269 


When, a week later, Satterlee received a letter from 
Elizabeth, it was not what he expected. She might have 
spent ten minutes writing it. There were two pages of 
dashed-off type, with jumps in her words, crossed out let¬ 
ters and little punctuation. 

“Something terrible has befallen Loong Li,” she began. 
“You know he is a friend of long standing.” Satterlee 
swore at this. That seemed to be the old Chinaman’s 
accolade, the long standing. And, by George! it was an 
accolade to be Elizabeth’s friend of long standing! “He 
wants to return to the land of his fathers’ ” Satterlee 
continued to read, “but I refuse to let him go. I simply 
can’t. There are other can’ts to the hill-town project. 
Lucy Penrose—Lize’s school—Anthony and the Harlech 
House—And now, and now, an hour ago, I received a 
cable announcing the death of Madame Slater. 

“Madame Slater bore her misfortunes in a calm, 
beautiful way I never hope to emulate. She had unex¬ 
pected virtues. She has, for instance, been very generous 
in her judgments of my runaway adventure. Though I 
wounded her pride almost mortally, she forgave me. 
I can’t think of her dead, she was so vital. All the 
corners in her nature we, you and I, used to laugh at were 
due to the antiquities of her times, mild Victorian tenets 
tenaciously sanctified and held to. And how very beauti¬ 
fully you laughed! Why have you let that charm slide 
with your youth? Forgive this divergence. I want you 
to know I learned to love Madame Slater and that I shall 
miss her reasonable goodness and still more her almost 
super-woman fairness. 

“This loss makes me remember acutely the past. I 


270 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


almost think I shall return, some day, to live at Blow- 
medown. I like best of all places I know the Connecti¬ 
cut hills and the Pinnacle with the solitary pine, where 
we placed Aunt Fan’s ashes. 

“If Loong Li’s trouble is concerned with the portman¬ 
teau, won’t you let me know? 

“I am not at all offended by your suggestion. I should 
enjoy sitting again with you in the fields of Elysium if I 
could find myself not barred out by something stubborn 
in my nature. I haven’t yet accustomed myself to the 
change in you. I feel quite as certain as I did when I 
was a girl that we have a right to choose our pleasures 
and I still hold to our creed, ‘I believe in freedom to 
work, freedom to live and freedom to die. For without 
freedom man is as a straw in a high wind . . .’ Only, 
as I grow older, I am impatient with the people who 
choose the pleasures that dissipate their powers. To see 
you, who are the most gifted man I have known, delib¬ 
erately waste yourself, is intolerable. As I saw you at 
the White Wren, hovering over a flaming fire and shiv¬ 
ering, stumbling along the hall, making a mess of every¬ 
thing you touched, fumbling with your brain as a blind 
man fumbles with a cane, I lost my final vestige of faith 
in your philosophy of life. We humans keep running up 
against stone walls, limits to our lawless flights. I have in 
my life no place for your asphodels. Oh! I know you 
are making a struggle to rise out of the bondage you have 
made for yourself. I know, also, you are making a death 
struggle. You have turned to me for help. I am not 
the one. Whatever I did, would be just wasted energy 
and wasted energy I count among the cardinal crimes. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


271 


I have no scientific knowledge or actual experience that 
could make me useful to you. I do not love you. Once, 
perhaps, but no longer. What hurts you is the fixed idea 
that no one cares a hang whether you live or die. It is a 
cradle instinct and should not be disregarded. Is there 
no one who cares? Think it out. I can’t. There are 
your children, too long abandoned . . 

Here the letter ended abruptly. 

“Time to quit!” Satterlee said angrily as he thought of 
Slater and the three little boys. 

“My instinct,” Satterlee wrote in reply to Elizabeth, 
“whether you call it cradle instinct, or by the old- 
fashioned name, human instinct, is for you. I need you, 
I need you more than any human being has needed any 
other human being since the sun first rose over this 
wretched atom of a planet. With you, I am once more 
a man; without you, I am a derelict. I don’t want any¬ 
thing else in the world but you, you, you. Come. If you 
won’t sit with me in the fields where the flowers are, then 
sit with me in some dusky corner where the books are. 
Come.” 

Satterlee felt that his letter was like that of any brute 
of a man in deadly trouble. There was nothing compel¬ 
ling in his words, no glamour. Nevertheless, he sent his 
entreaty, folded once, sealed with his crest, and finally 
registered. For he must at least know that Elizabeth had 
received it. 

The reply to this cry came the next day but one. 

“Loong Li,” Elizabeth wrote, “knows about the opium 
habit and kindred maladies. He has had experience in 
caring for patients suffering from its excessive use. He 


272 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


will go with you on the Italian hill town trip, if you are 
willing. Please take him. 

“I am still bewildered by Madame Slater’s sudden 
death. Letters from America came yesterday, telling 
about her funeral and the accident. She was knocked 
dead by a Ford runabout while carrying in her famous 
Nantucket basket a jar of jellied chicken to her gar¬ 
dener’s son, the one who was crippled in the war. Since 
the fall of 1918, with few interruptions, she has visited, 
once a week, what Anthony called her flotsams and 
jetsams. There were ten of them, and now Julianna will 
carry on the work, as if she could compensate for her 
mother’s reassuring presence by a mess of pottage! 

“You still neglect to tell me what I want most to 
know. What happened to upset Loong Li when he saw 
you in London?” 

Satterlee, determined to have his way, wrote Elizabeth 
three more letters. 

These Elizabeth lumped and answered by the one 
word, “Impossible.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


Elizabeth emerged from the dark, fog-shrouded winter 
with her work midway toward completion. The two 
Archibalds had again smashed into her life and left her 
giddily wondering how it was they still had the power to 
master her imagination. Moreover, the death of her 
mother-in-law had hurt beyond reason. While Madame 
Slater lived, the future of her three boys had seemed 
secure, destined eventually to bear the hallmark of her 
cunning workmanship. 

And why had Madam Slater willed that she, Elizabeth 
the faulty, live at Fenway House? How had she dared 
to trust to her the holding together of the clan, for the 
holding was according to her mid-Victorian creed, the 
woman’s part. This was a question to make the gods 
ponder. And by what miracle had her imperious faith 
remained unshattered? She should have been outraged. 
But here as elsewhere, Madame Slater had been auto¬ 
cratic, believing to be true that which she willed to be 
true. But why had she desired to trust to her the keep¬ 
ing of the gates? There was Julianna to inherit the 
Georgian mansion and its million encumbrances, and 
she had been chosen. 

To be so flattered by her magnificent mother-in-law 
produced in Elizabeth a hilarity very near to hysteria. 
This sensation was dizzily displaced by what she chose to 
define the uncertainties. There were times when she 
feared she was an amateur psychologist. Somewhere 
273 


274 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


she had missed the road and so lost that sacred freedom 
she was prepared to ride hard to win. Had Madame 
Slater penetrated her sub-conscious nature, beyond the 
point she had the power to go? Her mother-in-law had 
challenged her to the death. Dared she, and if she dared, 
could she, refuse to meet the challenge? 

According to human creed, she ought to be pining her 
life away for the loss of her children. She had not seen 
her sons for nearly a year, but the separation was not 
breaking her heart. Frankly, she admitted she was a 
dreadful mother. She didn’t feel hard and unnatural; 
but that was what she was. Once, she had passionately 
loved Aunt Fan in whose serene presence she found what 
she imagined the world meant by the word contentment. 
Even after she had come to live with Madame Duncan 
her days had been stripped of the ron, ron, ron purrings 
which so sweetly oil the domestic machinery of most 
families. Being with Aunt Fan was like being alone 
with the stars. Her experience with Archibald Slater had 
been too blinding for her to know whether she had loved 
him most or most hated him. Lize was just a part of her 
own self. Beyond this she could not see. 

And now, Loong Li and Lucy Penrose and Harlech 
House were serious disturbances to her inner peace. It 
maddened her that she failed to free herself from human 
disturbances. But so it was! Loong refused to tell her 
what was his trouble. Neither had Satterlee answered 
her question about the portmanteau. His carelessness to 
the sufferings of Loong Li she failed to understand, for it 
had been his exquisite regard for the little things in life 
that she had found most perfectly developed in his 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


275 


nature. Anthony’s demands upon her time were almost 
as difficult to satisfy as had been the little boys’. And 
Lucy Penrose had grown unaccountably restless. 

It was evident that Lucy believed Anthony was too 
fond of her. He did care for her in a delightful 
Anthonian way, which meant something arabesque and 
decorative like a charming but superfluous pattern used 
to enrich a building, not for any structural use, but for 
the mere pleasure of the design. It was rather odd that 
Lucy, whose nature was crystalline, failed to realize that 
Anthony was too true to the clan Slater ever to forget 
that Elizabeth was the wife of Arch. Anthony came to 
her with his double soul and not being misunderstood 
was grateful. He was exacting and, being tormented with 
plunging energy, an exhausting person to have around. 
His whole attention was now centered on Harlech House 
upon which he worked most of the twenty-four hours of 
the days on which he worked at all. He had a consci¬ 
entious way of consulting Elizabeth, when it came to 
detailed drawings of inside trim which bored her con- 
sumedly, for she found herself entirely indifferent to such 
niceties and she did not dare to let him know how indif¬ 
ferent she really was. 

Elizabeth, being very much disturbed by Lucy’s ebbing 
courage, sent for Doctor Pontillionni, whom earlier in the 
year Satterlee had urgently pressed upon her. Pontil¬ 
lionni flashed into the White Wren like a meteor. His 
dazzling blue eyes, his gaiety of soul, his quaint rhythmic 
tunes, never more than half suppressed, stirred in Eliza¬ 
beth and Anthony a sense of quivering life. “That sub¬ 
merged music-box made me hip, hip, hooray about the 


276 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


house till I am ashamed,” Anthony afterwards apologized 
to Elizabeth. “He seems to be living in high C. It is 
gaudy but impossible. He’ll die in his tracks. True love 
is a little too magnificent. It makes heart-breaking tunes 
for its uses and sends them passionately ringing down the 
ages, to put fire into my dreary blood and to let loose the 
dogs of passion.” Anthony choked as he bolted precipi¬ 
tately for his own room and his blue prints. 

Pontillionni’s quietly pronounced words, after he had 
been in Lucy’s room for a short time, made Elizabeth 
turn from Moel Hebog to whom she had been saying 
a pagan prayer and wrathfully face the Italian. “Maybe 
you stay here all your life, Miss Penrose, and maybe not. 
Wherever you are, there is your happiness. All we get is 
what we pull out of each hour as we live that hour. You 
have the gift to be happy. Pull!” 

Then Pontillionni turned his back swiftly on the 
smooth white bed, where Lucy lay like a girl waiting for 
burial, and looked long into Elizabeth’s gloomy face, 
“You are beautiful,” he said in clear-cut English, “but 
don’t imagine you own the whole ocean, as one of your 
clever countrymen put it, because you have a wave in 
your hair. I feel very much like singing,” he added 
quickly and, crossing to an open window, he boldly sang 
a tumultuous tune that thrilled Elizabeth till she felt her 
skin crinkling with sympathy. “That was written by a 
friend who loved life. He lost both his feet at Teranina, 
in a war-raid, but he still loves life and makes up gay 
tunes about it. Do you know the old Latin motto, Sic 
transit gloria mundi? It should have been written, Num- 
quam transit gloria mundi. But where would be the 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


277 


rhythm? Even the old Romans sacrificed truth to style. 
Nientel Good-bye, Miss Penrose. Next time you will 
tell me about Snowdon? I like to hear of misadventure 
coolly borne. It means a sound and well-balanced 
nature, endowed with great reserve power.” 

Back in the White Wren, Pontillionni apologized elab¬ 
orately for his exuberance. “I knew Miss Penrose 
needed to be taken out of herself. Her soul is like water 
in a deep well; it has no exit. I am first of all,” he 
explained, “a nerve specialist. After that I am an 
Italian gentleman of many formalities.” 

Pontillionni’s sudden switch to the grand manner of an 
Italian nobleman filled Anthony with a perfect content¬ 
ment, not difficult for Elizabeth to understand. The boy, 
in whose loosely hung body lay the granite strength of 
his race, stood carelessly negligent, half supported by a 
table top, while he fixed the eyes of insolent youth upon 
the doctor. 

Half way through a flowing speech about the true 
American and his ability to rise from the tawdry to starry 
heights, the doctor stumbled against his own rhythmic 
words and said to Elizabeth, “I like your writings, par¬ 
ticularly I like your short poems. They show more 
patience than your novel. Art is patient; that is what 
you and your generation are prone to forget. You call 
old, old things by new names and think that you are 
pioneers. You are what we make you. You are merely 
our nimble fingers which write down for us what we 
think. I read you in the morning when I shave.” 

Pontillionni slipped away from Anthony, who was now 
attempting to force him into his fur-lined, green coat. To 


278 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


his displeasure, the grace of parting was being cut short. 
But before Anthony could get him out into the hall, he 
clipped his heels together and said to Elizabeth, “Pa¬ 
tience! Life is not long enough for me to follow through 
to the end the treatment of certain illnesses. I have to 
wait and maybe die, still waiting. So also with you. 
Pardon, I will write you soon about Miss Penrose and 
soon, if I may, I will see her again. Arm yourself with 
patience, Mrs. Slater. There is a divinity in . . 

The final words of the doctor were lost in a sort of 
tussle, as Anthony forced the Italian out into the car and 
so with speed beyond the guaranteed power of Elizabeth’s 
runabout to the station, where the train stood waiting. 
For the engineer who had brought the great specialist to 
Bethgelert, earlier in the day, knew he must meet the 
south express at the junction and return to London and 
his occupation of saving lives. Anthony, who indulged in 
the forced privilege of riding in the locomotive, had told 
him thrilling tales of the deeds of physicians and nurses 
which were somewhat hazily mixed in with strange 
adventures at the front and unimagined deeds of daring. 
Not for one instant did the locomotive driver confuse the 
powers of Pontillionni with those of the village phy¬ 
sician. 

Terrified by the new doctor’s pronouncements and 
troubled by her own possible neglect, Elizabeth rushed 
over to the grey house where Lucy lay as one already 
dead. 

Lucy’s companionship had been one good strong 
nurse always on call; two hours a day, or nearly two 
hours, of her own company, divided between morning and 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


279 


evening; Lize’s brief half-hour visit after luncheon, and 
Loong Li’s courteous morning call when he brought her 
an occasional letter or magazine, and this failing, a Lon¬ 
don daily or a dish of his own devising. Anthony went 
over Sundays, when she was strong enough to see him, 
and there was a fortnightly call from the sympathetic 
Welsh clergyman. Moreover, Dr. Philander dropped in 
at irregular intervals. 

And Lucy? Lucy had seemed up to a month before, 
quite curiously, almost annoyingly satisfied. Slow of 
imagination, had she only begun to realize what it meant 
to lie in one position into eternity; to watch the sun creep 
north and then south in its yearly changes; to be able 
to tell by the shadows on the White Wren, the time of 
day and even the time of year? Would such things 
become important to her in the passing of hours? To 
feel one’s self so utterly useless, to be so utterly useless, 
what of that? If she, Elizabeth, could devote her life, 
every day of it to Lucy, why of course she would make 
a difference in Lucy’s happiness. So also, in the life of 
Archibald Satterlee. Possibly, she might save him a 
wreck from a still more hideous wreckage. And now 
Arch, the Puritan rock on which she had nearly foun¬ 
dered, asked her back. There was, also, Anthony—and 
the three boys. 

With all her might, Elizabeth wished she were a man, 
for a man would not see these big demands of little 
human things upon his time, or feel in any way bound 
to neglect his chosen work to satisfy them. With him, 
it would be a matter of integrity, to be first of all true to 
his work, that is, merely true to himself. There was 


280 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


where a man’s conscience inevitably centered. The job 
of being merciful he left to women. But Elizabeth 
could not feel any instinct to carry through this relegated 
job. 

Almost in a panic, Elizabeth opened the quaint blue 
door and entered Lucy’s room. Sinking gently down into 
a swinging chair that faced the bed, she began to detail 
the afternoon’s adventure. As she hadn’t very much to 
say to the invalid she spun out the odd speeches of the 
Italian doctor and described his manner of swallowing 
cup after cup of scalding tea. 

“I want you to know,” Lucy interrupted in her most 
decisive manner, though her breath came haltingly forth, 
“that I haven’t given up hope of being able to walk again. 
I know I shall be able to do things like other people. I 
have been passive too long. Please tell that wonderful, 
strange Italian, Doctor Basso Thomassini Pontillionni, he 
must help me. He can. He gave me absolute confidence. 
What eyes he has! I didn’t suppose you found such- 
honest blue eyes out of New England. He made me feel 
alive. I want to see him again. I want to hear him 
sing. I want him to make me well.” 

“He is coming again.” 

“What did he talk about, before he left for the sta¬ 
tion?” 

“Oh—all sorts of indifferent things. He began a gran¬ 
diloquent speech about our native country, but he inter¬ 
rupted himself to warn me to be patient. He quite lec¬ 
tured me,” Elizabeth added with a short laugh. “He said 
Archibald Satterlee might pull himself up standing if he 
had some one to hold him a bridle hand as it were. I 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


281 


wondered if he thought I was the one to wield the whip.” 

“You certainly are not,” Lucy’s voice rang out almost 
naturally. “Never you.” 

“You enjoyed his singing?” Elizabeth swerved from a 
too dangerous subject. 

“It was very good singing, I imagine. It overpowered 
me with a longing to be free. For one beautiful space of 
unmeasured time I was free.” 

Elizabeth remained dumb before Lucy’s tragic longing. 

“I shall be happy.” Lucy’s voice was now merely a 
breath. 

“I wish you had more interests, more actual fun,” 
Elizabeth said after a little. “How would you like a 
phonograph?” 

“I should feel that I was in Millar’s drug store in our 
home town, trying to get a prescription put up for Mother 
who was slowly dying, while the marble soda fountain 
and the mahogany phonograph and the telephone booths 
and the sale of tickets were distracting every clerk in 
the shop. I should despise a phonograph.” 

“Isn’t there something different that I can do?” 

The two women’s eyes met gravely. 

“My brain has formed a queer habit of floating off 
into space. I’d like to do something practical with it, 
something that would anchor it to my cool, numb body.” 

The turn over for Lucy began with Elizabeth’s engag¬ 
ing the pastor of the English Chapel to give her lessons 
in Greek. He was a charming, tender-hearted, impecuni¬ 
ous man who loved music and the arts and through whose 
speech trailed the alluring cadences of the rain and the 
winds of his native land. When Pontillionni made his 


282 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


second visit, he prescribed electrical treatment and a new 
method of massage; more for the mental comfort of the 
patient, which doing something was certain to bring, than 
for any benefit that might result from such treatment, he 
explained to Elizabeth. He also recommended one of his 
especially trained nurses for a couple of months. A fresh 
face, he thought, would do Lucy good. “But she costs 
money, very much money, the one I would send you,” he 
warned, as he looked appraisingly about the White Wren 
and remembered Elizabeth’s small American car. “Her 
name is Mary Whitehall. Out of the wreckage of the 
Great War, she has left only her two youngest sons. She 
charges enough to educate them.” 

“How much is her fee? Does she want it in advance?” 

“Forty guineas a month.” 

“All the better,” Elizabeth agreed happily; for to pay 
out money for Lucy was the simplest way she knew to 
help her, and it somewhat eased her conscience. “But 
how can forty guineas a month support three people?” 
she asked. 

“Mrs. Whitehall says it is sumptuous. You, of course, 
will pay her railroad fare from London.” 

Mary Whitehall came and was in her way as austere 
and grand as Moel Hebog. Elizabeth, now at rest con¬ 
cerning Lucy, again turned to her work. She would 
have been completely absorbed by her writing if An¬ 
thony’s perpetual consultations about Harlech House, 
and Arch’s now long-answered telegram had not both¬ 
ered her. 

Was she at last, in her middle life, beginning to develop 
a mediaeval conscience? 


CHAPTER XXIII 


To Mary Whitehall belonged the grand manner. It 
sat oddly on her round, irregular figure, modestly clothed 
in an orange-brown alpaca gown, frayed at the placket 
hole and around its two side pockets till it exposed a 
heavy grey lining. Over this she invariably wore when in 
Lucy’s room an exquisitely made all-over white apron 
and a cap. But Mary Whitehall was not always in 
Lucy’s room. As a matter of course, she came over to the 
White Wren to tea and she insisted upon Elizabeth join¬ 
ing her in swift walks. 

“I like you very much,” Mary Whitehall said to Eliza¬ 
beth as she plodded along a wet mountain-road, regardless 
of steady, downfalling rain. “You are the only American 
I have ever really liked,” she added with emphasis 
doubly marked by a splash made by the bringing of her 
left foot down into a puddle. That was where her left 
foot came next and so she put it there, Elizabeth imag¬ 
ined. Mary never deviated in her forward march for 
exercise. 

They were walking at nearly a running pace through 
Llamberis Pass where a long line of pine trees, their 
branches blown eastward, looked like a flight of fleeing 
maidens with trailing hair. The stream pounding along 
at their side made the world almost too noisy for con¬ 
versation. 

“Lucy Penrose and Anthony are both more typically 
283 


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FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


American than I am,” Elizabeth shouted. “They are 
New England, and that is the cream of us.” 

“Anthony is not American at all. He can’t be typical 
of any breed or people.” 

“He is very much like his brothers, less fiery, less reso¬ 
lute, more poetic. But the racial characteristics are the 
same. His brothers are fierce New Englanders. Rev¬ 
erence for their own breed is so strongly developed in 
them you might be easily deceived into believing they 
were descended from God!” 

“How your husband must regret your long absence. It 
is unavoidable, of course, but I can’t believe such separa¬ 
tions are wise. However,” Mary’s steady voice hesitated 
for a second, “you will soon be free to return to your 
own.” 

“Free, free, who is ever free?” 

“ ‘Who can love and rest?’ ” Mary quoted in a cold, 
stern voice that arrested Elizabeth’s heartbeats. 

Again, Elizabeth wondered what perils of living had 
overtaken Mary, stolen from her what she held most dear, 
and dumped her into Doctor Pontillionni’s hands. The 
Great War, she had to believe. Again she thought of 
Gwendolyn Tawney’s two cousins, twice removed, who 
had been gassed, discharged cured and who afterwards 
had gone blind. They had not been remembered in the 
will. The sweet old Pancras sisters had told her about 
them, and she had forgotten. Well, it was not too late, 
she hoped, to ask Mr. Barthrup to do something about it. 

For a space they paused at what Lize called the great 
pool, now a rushing torrent which had made for itself a 
path down a steep embankment, across the road and on 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


285 


to the wild river below. Mary again spoke. “It will not 
be very long now. In the meantime you are wise to work. 
You may be thankful you have work to fill your time 
while you wait.” 

“You mean . . . you mean that Lucy-” 

“Doctor Pontillionni said you did not know quite 
how ill, quite what the new restlessness of Miss Penrose 
means. It is not a friendship that will shatter your 
soul?” 

Elizabeth choked back her tears. “I love Lucy,” 
she said. “Did Doctor Pontillionni say it will be soon?” 

“Have you noticed how still she lies, stiller than when 
she fell, stiller even than when I first came?” 

Elizabeth plodded on, struggling against the intermit¬ 
tent gusts of rain that blinded her way. “Look,” she 
cried, spinning about and ducking to avoid a straight 
onrush of water, “see those black and silver clouds rip¬ 
ping through the blue. Have you ever seen anything so 
frenzied? The sky has gone mad.” 

The wind again subsided and Elizabeth said to Mary, 
“It makes me angry with life that Lucy has to die. Her 
nature was so well balanced that it seemed silky. She 
loved just living. She didn’t ask much for herself. What 
fell to her lot made her happy. That may have been 
partly pride and an unquestioning belief in the spiritual 
asset of discipline. If she never soared high she never 
touched bottom. Dear Lucy! Dear Lucy Penrose! She 
was like her name, mild and sweet. I am so sorry for 
her. To die when she would so like to live; when she is 
so fit to live! It is wicked.” 

Elizabeth and Mary splashed on through the road, now 



286 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


a stream of running water. It began to rain again 
and the wind steadily rose. “Is there nothing I can do 
for her to make her happier?” Elizabeth asked as they 
approached the arched stone bridge beyond which rose 
the White Wren, shining a kindly welcome to them from 
its lozenge-shaped windows. 

“Yes,” Mary said practically. “Miss Penrose would 
enjoy silk night-gowns. There is a place on Regent’s 
Street, where you can get excellent ones, a Madame Pour- 
quoi’s. You might also get for her new breakfast dishes. 
Wedgwood makes charming ones.” 

“I will write in tonight,” Elizabeth agreed absently, 
and Mary Whitehall smiled, pleased that the little noth¬ 
ings she had learned to prescribe to make the long final 
waiting of the friends of her patients a little less difficult, 
were rightly appraised by Elizabeth. 

And so Elizabeth, as she went about with rage and 
anguish in her heart for Lucy, ordered the Wedgwood 
and the silk night-gowns along with more chicken and 
lamb bones for broth and more yellow roses and pansies 
and forget-me-nots. “For lo! The Lord giveth and the 
Lord taketh away, and in His great mercy . . .” But the 
quotation went awry, for Elizabeth knew her Bible only 
as she had heard Arch read it aloud to the children. The 
future seemed to stretch away from her in a million paths, 
and down whatever one she looked, she saw enchantment. 
It had been that way when she was a little child; it was 
that way now. That was why Lucy’s fate was intolerable, 
Lucy who spent her life making rainbows for other 
people. 

With passionate zeal, Elizabeth now put forth h ei 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


287 


nervous strength, of which she still had an unmeasured 
store, and brought to near completion the first running of 
the novel she had begun in the fall. She was writing, 
she hoped, for Lize’s generation. It was her creed not 
to be didactic, and yet the burnished brightness of her 
book was constantly being marred by short interludes of 
discursive writing which she was constantly cutting out, 
together with descriptions of nature which she poignantly 
loved. Occasionally she stopped long enough to write 
a poem that was singing itself in her brain, and once she 
even wrote a short essay on the moral aspect of aesthetics 
which was immediately accepted by an English monthly. 
For, as Arch had once said of her writing, it had the 
marketable quality which gave her an unfair advantage 
over many less lucky writers who actually did better 
work than she. 

“You mean style,’’ Elizabeth had said impatiently. 

“Not at all!” Arch had denied, but failing words to 
explain himself, he had remained angrily silent. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


One cloudy April day, Elizabeth and Mary Whitehall 
lingered over their afternoon tea, finding much happiness 
in each other’s companionship. Now that Lucy was 
worse, Lize ate her suppers at the parsonage where there 
were children of her own age, and Elizabeth missed her. 
“I should be quite alone, if it weren’t for you,” she said, 
warming herself over a crackling fire Mary had lain with 
almost uncanny skill. 

“We learn to live alone,” Mary said as she hung on 
the crane the bubbling tea-kettle Elizabeth handed her. 
“The family life of most of my friends was destroyed 
by the Great War. The sweet human side of life—the 
side that makes life possible, has been obliterated. In 
England, with our bleak winters and our long disinte¬ 
grating summers, we should scarcely be human if it 
weren’t for our homes.” 

Mary, still chilly, shivered slightly as she rose to return 
to Lucy. She put down her teacup and then said, 
regretfully, “The time has come when I need a nurse to 
help me. There is little for her to do, but Lucy should 
no longer be left with only a maid, or with anyone else 
inexperienced with death. Lucy may slip from us with¬ 
out any warning and then again she may . . .” Mary 
left her sentence unfinished. “Won’t you,” she said, 
“have a thermos bottle filled with coffee for the night? I 
would also be grateful for two of your nice sandwiches— 
288 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


289 


nothing else-” Mary’s voice again trailed into silence. 

Outside, the wind was flooding the valley with weird 
rhythms. Elizabeth could hear the water booming 
threateningly under the two bridges, while the fire, before 
which she and Mary had been so comfortable only a few 
minutes before, crackled delicately into silence. The 
walls of the White Wren, alone, stood between her and 
the fierce elements which had battered Moel Hebog since 
time was and which would keep on battering the por¬ 
tentous naked mountain, thousands upon thousands of 
years after she and Lucy . . . and Arch had passed into 
eternity. 

Elizabeth dropped into Mary’s chair close to the dead 
fire, feeling sorrowful and inefficient. There was one 
person, alone, whom she wanted—Aunt Fan. It was 
impossible to believe her finely tempered soul had been 
extinguished—blotted from her vision—never again. The 
front door banged. Elizabeth sprang to her feet, only to 
meet Lize, whom Loong had brought home from the par¬ 
sonage. 

Lize, who was concealing something in her hands, but 
carelessly folded in paper, made a dash for the kitchen. 
It was a surprise for her mother’s dinner, something she 
had made herself. Lize seemed to have a liking for the 
domestic arts. She chose to do things that demanded 
skill. Her hands were beautifully formed like Aunt 
Fan’s. Elizabeth felt impatient with nature who dared 
to decide one’s bent by the length of one’s fingers or the 
clinching power of one’s jaw-bone. It put the sting into 
life or took it out according to one’s vision. 

“Mother,” Lize cried as she poked her shaggy head 



290 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


into the room, “enough things happened today to fill a 
bushel basket. But I shan’t tell ’em to you unless you 
tuck me into bed.” 

With this threat, Lize stormed upstairs and plunged 
into the intricacies of double and single knots and 
de Long snaps. 

“Loong Li,” Elizabeth said presently to the old China¬ 
man, who was renewing the fire with pine cones and bog, 
“don’t leave me in June. Lize and I need you. Don’t you 
see we need you? And now we are losing Miss Penrose.” 

Loong shook his head stubbornly as he brushed up 
the hearth. 

“You have something on your mind that troubles you,” 
Elizabeth said. “Don’t let anything that you have done 
or left undone, or something that someone else has done, 
trouble you. You have a loyal heart and nothing else is 
of much consequence, nothing, Loong Li. I say nothing 

But Loong Li stole out of the room as he had entered 
it, in a cloud of gloom and mystery. 

That night, Anthony came home on fire with a new 
plan for a secret garden hedged about by yew trees and 
stretching away southward, from Harlech House toward 
the sea. It was a happiness to talk with Anthony in his 
present mood; he seemed so vital in an all but intangible 
world and so cheerful. Elizabeth, whose afternoon rest¬ 
lessness intensified as the hours passed, yielded to the 
comfort of his human companionship. It seemed to her 
that the very winds of heaven were subdued by his glow¬ 
ing sureness, and when, at nine, they went over to Plas- 
tan-y-craig to carry Mary Whitehall her coffee and sand¬ 
wiches, the stars were shining blue in a deeply purple 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


291 


sky as if by some odd magic of the boy’s own making. 

“I love the world on such a night as this,” Anthony 
said happily as they turned back toward the White Wren. 
“The little houses with the twinkling lights, the smell of 
the earth, the stars, and then the people. But most of 
all, I love you.” 

“That is because your work is going well,” Elizabeth 
said, swift to avoid sentiment if there were any in the 
boy’s last words. 

“Possibly,” said Anthony with doubt in his voice. 


CHAPTER XXV 


A fortnight passed. A soft green mist now shimmered 
in treetop and hedgerow. The birds were singing again 
in the early morning, and now and then a fly crawled out 
from some niche along the moulding and made a fuss on 
the window panes. In some pool not far from Elizabeth’s 
window a bullfrog galumphed every night to the moon. 
The outside world was swiftly coming to life; Lucy alone 
remained unchanged. The old efficient nurse returned 
and eased Mary Whitehall’s work less than Elizabeth 
had expected. It had become impossible to meet Lucy’s 
restlessness. She had lost the power to sleep. She was 
acutely conscious of her condition and in her heart there 
was none of that resignation Elizabeth believed to be a 
fundamental characteristic of her nature. The pellucid 
spring sunshine and the delicate shadows flickering across 
her counterpane from the new leaves of the birch tree 
that stood sentinel at the corner of the house no longer 
gave her pleasure. 

The fourth time, Elizabeth sent for the London spe¬ 
cialist, her own impatience against destiny driving her 
to commit this folly. 

“I have come not to see Miss Penrose, but to see you,” 
Doctor Pontillionni announced to Elizabeth, when he 
first saw her, standing sorrowfully by an open window of 
the White Wren. “Lucy Penrose I trust entirely to 
Mary Whitehall. Strong natures pay a bitter penalty for 
their strength. Giving up of any kind is contrary to 
292 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


293 


Miss Penrose’s character, and dying—but pardon me for 
being personal; you are a rebel.” 

Doctor Pontillionni delivered his last words in his best 
Italian manner and then looked keenly at Elizabeth to 
see their effect. According to his code of etiquette he had 
been unpardonably rude in thus approaching the Ameri¬ 
can. Elizabeth’s dark eyebrows drew closer together, 
but he felt the frown lurking beneath the surface of her 
brow to be a frown not of anger, but rather of boredom. 
“I cannot dismiss my North of Wales patient without 
giving you a prescription.” 

“Afterwards, afterwards,” Elizabeth said impatiently, 
as she snapped the window shut to keep out a sudden 
shower. 

“There may be no afterwards; there is a now; the 
now is all important.” 

Doctor Pontillionni, who had planted himself in the 
center of the room, stood as if he had been growing there 
for a century. Elizabeth imagined his roots reaching 
deep into the cobwebby cellar beneath them. “I sent 
for you,” she said stubbornly, “to bring comfort and 
possibly help to Lucy.” 

“And I came to bring help and possibly comfort to 
you.” 

“Your boots are wet; they are dribbling pools of 
water-” 

“And you are immaculate. I never saw you when you 
weren’t. I suppose when you go into the open, you 
sensibly cover your boots with American rubbers. As 
for me I cannot accustom myself to the clogs.” 

Elizabeth, who had no other intention of mentioning 



294 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


his wet boots than to offer a pair of Anthony’s dry ones 
as a substitute, flushed with annoyance. She felt her 
blood mounting to her hair as Doctor Pontillionni fixed 
his eyes upon her. Why in the name of a thousand 
saints, he was asking himself, had she shown no emotion 
when he had expected her to, and now violently blushed 
without adequate reason? Could the blush be a sluggish 
reflex of her first repressed emotion? Or was it a com¬ 
plex- But Mrs. Slater was addressing him. 

“If,” she said, “you have to take the all-important me 
first, be quick about it. I don’t need you, I don’t need 
anyone. Can’t you see I am splendidly well,” she was 
trying to say, when Doctor Pontillionni again interrupted. 

“Yes, you do. You need me very much. Your need 
is imminent.” 

Elizabeth flung her arms wide and then dropped them 
in her impatience. 

Doctor Pontillionni watched her closely, again classi¬ 
fying. She was a more beautiful woman than he had at 
first recognized, with more virility, more fascination. A 
woman of her type was rarely a coquette for the natural 
reason, there was no necessity to strive for or even to 
nurse admiration, which was securely hers. In such 
cases, the sex urge that drives plainer women from the 
day of their maturity till their death is negligible. But 
why had Elizabeth Slater buried herself in the north 
of Wales? For the sake of her little daughter’s gov¬ 
erness? Nothing more improbable. He couldn’t make 
much out of the case. The American evidently had 
money to which she seemed as indifferent a$ to her 
beauty. She had a scrap of genius, too, and she was 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


295 


driven by her temperament to rash acts. Such a woman 
might easily be intolerant and—intolerable. Mrs. 
Slater was neither. To his mind, all that he knew about 
her could not in any way account for her out of se¬ 
quence position. Any phenomenon out of type he 
examined with the zeal with which a botanist examines 
any variance to a well-defined order or genus. 

Elizabeth, who had been helplessly writhing under his 
bold, clear stare, which caused such useless delay, said 
irritably, “Psychoanalyze me, if you must, only, please, 
do it some other time.” 

“It’s done!” Doctor Pontillionni said with a trium¬ 
phant smile as he began to walk about the room and to 
hum. “I am well acquainted with you,” he declared. 
“Oh! very well! First you were a dark page and then at 
a flash came light. You have the intelligent mind, the 
kind heart, the exalted spirit. It is that intense love of 
life that plays many cats and banjos with your own 
nature. You are too impatient of bondage. I saw that 
the first day I met you. There is restlessness and back 
of that a fire that drives—drives—drives you. You are 
a blown flame. But-” 

Here Doctor Pontillionni laid his two brown hands 
heavily for an instant on Elizabeth’s shoulders. “But,” 
he repeated emphatically, “if the flame is blown too hard, 
whiff! out goes the light, never, never to return. Mrs. 
Slater, get out of the draft; get again into line. I can’t 
show you where to go or how to get there. You are 
intelligent enough to find your own path and to keep on 
it. More than this, you are suffering from repressions.” 

“Repressions, suppressions!” Elizabeth said sharply. 1 


296 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


despise the whole R & S doctrine. There is no such thing 
as freedom. You can’t even choose your burdens. If 
you cast aside old ones, wild for freedom, ten million 
others rise up in their place and beat you down. Burden¬ 
bearing is the woman’s lot. She can never meet the need 
of her own soul without riding down the souls of the 
living—and of the dead. In what frenzied moment did 
she accept as her portion that final gift of God, a tender 
heart? Doctor Pontillionni, what is your marvelous 
antidote for me?” 

“I have already given it to you: an opportunity to talk 
straight from the hilt. Only, don’t imagine you are 
singled out in your perplexities, or that it is any especial 
importance that you should be happy. Happiness is 
merely the result of being well in line—perfectly attuned. 
And now let us go over to see Miss Penrose. She, at 
least, has nothing to fear.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


One late April night, when the wind was chill, An¬ 
thony and Elizabeth lingered after coffee in the low 
living-room of the White Wren, for there alone was an 
open fire and warmth. 

“How can a youngest son recover from the taint of 
being the youngest son, if the family keep on holding 
him down to the ignoble and infantile position of a 
puling infant?” 

Anthony, who bitterly resented his mother’s will, spoke 
in a loud, fierce voice that made Elizabeth think of Arch. 
She was sorry for Anthony, for in her heart she, too, 
bitterly resented the will. “I am positive,” she said 
quietly, “that Arch knew nothing of the restrictions. He 
can’t change them, but I am certain he will make them 
as easy for you as you will let him.” 

“Huh!” Anthony flung himself down on the sofa beside 
Elizabeth and, like Arch, clasped his hands and pushed 
one knee up well within their circle. “As easy as I 
will let him! I’ll be dog-goned, if I don’t give him a 
run for his money!” 

“He will be the one who walks the floor.” 

Anthony looked sharply at Elizabeth, and then grinned 
foolishly as if he had been caught in the preserve closet. 
“How much do you know, I wonder?” 

“Not much of anything. Tell me.” 

“It’s been darned grey up here this winter, and soli¬ 
tary, you writing all the time, and Lucy being sick. I 
297 


298 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


had to be amused. There are as you know best of any of 
us, many and diverse ways of seeking amusement.” An¬ 
thony lapsed for a moment into silence. “Well, I am not 
very inventive. I saw nothing to play with except your 
car. So I tinkered her insides and persuaded her to 
speed up. At first, she didn’t seem to be hankering after 
her job; but when she caught on! Darn! You ought to 
have seen her go from here to Port Madoc! Other people 
sort of got interested in her welfare, and Billy Williams, 
the engineer of our one and only derelict train, got to 
running her. You see we go up and come back about the 
same time. So, naturally, we got to betting. Sometimes 
I won and sometimes Billy won. It depended largely 
upon the cranky and cantankerous spirit of our engines 
and the equilibrium of our roads. That night, the one 
you must have read about in the Port Madoc local, the 
bird was humming up at about forty-four an hour, never 
realizing that it was her swan song, when quicker than 
you can think, swifter than greased lightning, she 
whipped out of the road, up a bank, flung herself down 
again, inscribed a circle and, My Hat! She backed up 
the hill she first attacked head on. Now, don’t ask me 
why I didn’t do this and that. The entire shooting 
match was done for me, before I had the chance to wink 
one eye. If you will believe me, there wasn’t anything 
left of the car, except the front seat and the steering 
wheel. And there I sat smoking a cigarette, when Bill 
Williams rounded the cut, saw me, and slowed down to 
take me on. There happened to be a reporter on the 
train and he got the entire darned story before we knew 
his job. Bill said he wouldn’t have minded so much 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


299 


about the betting, if he weren’t sixty-five years old. He 
couldn’t have felt worse if he had been caught in his 
neighbor’s chicken yard.” 

“Heavens! Anthony, why can’t you give it up?” 

“Betting? No chance. The family won’t let me.” 
Anthony spoke irritably. “The car was beyond salvage,” 
he continued determinedly, “and so I have already taken 
over at my own expense, Prudence Dodge. She shied a 
bit, and so Doctor Philander W. let me have her cheap. 
He has reverted to the staid and reliable horse.” 

A fierce rain beat coldly upon the loosely-hinged wind- 
dows. Elizabeth rose to pull close the old blue curtains 
against the storm. 

“Your face has grown to look very stern,” Anthony 
said. “You are displeased about the gambling. It wasn’t 
anything but betting, really. We put up twopence 
week-days and a shilling Saturday nights, and holidays.” 

“Are you in serious trouble of any kind?” Elizabeth 
asked as she again took her seat on the low sofa. 

“The will angers me,” Anthony shamefacedly reverted 
to his grievance. “How can I ever explain my finances 
to the girl I shall some day want to marry? And if I 
explained to her, what about our children? How could 
I keep their respect? By her will, Mother said to me, 
‘Anthony, you can’t be trusted. You have forfeited your 
right to hold property.’ If she meant that, she also meant 
I must never have a wife or children. Don’t you see, 
Elizabeth, that is what she meant?” 

“Do you want to marry? Is there some girl you love?” 
Elizabeth asked, wondering if she, who had been playing 
the fairy godmother part in his tragic drama, actually 


300 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


had any knowledge of him that justified her benevo¬ 
lence. 

Anthony looked at Elizabeth and frowned into her 
cool, friendly eyes. He didn’t choose to be held down to 
anything, and yet it was pleasant enough to talk about 
one’s self, once in a blue moon, especially when one had 
an understanding listener. 

“It is Harlech House as much as anything,” he said 
somberly. “It is the kind of house I have always thought 
I should be glad to own. You don’t love it half enough. 
You will never live there, though it is the most beautiful 
place there is. Three directions, the windows of the 
house face the sea. Then there are the yew gardens. I 
have never seen anything more beautiful than the gar¬ 
dens, the dark trees driven and twisted by the north 
winds, but safely out of reach of the wolfish waters and 
just beyond the yews are the English heathers and the 
bell heaths.” 

“But they don’t exist, yet!” 

Anthony brought his foot down with a thud and 
looked at Elizabeth. “Well, I suppose not,” he admitted, 
“except in my own mind and on blue-prints. I wish you 
might feel about it as I feel. I never think of the house 
without seeing people looking out of the windows and 
standing in the doorways. In the gardens there are 
always children. And the house, damn it! I know it 
is right, exquisitely proportioned like a sonata. It is 
awfully plain with just enough carefully worked up 
detail to give it accent. Every line in the house has its 
meaning. You will adore it—say your prayers to it, 
maybe. I—I—I should hate to have it an albatross 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


301 


with an uncanny magic to do you harm, for you ought, 
maybe, to go back to Arch and the boys and leave the 
house to be blown upon and destroyed by the north 
winds and the cutting sands, a derelict.” 

Various curious clocks scattered about the White 
Wren, which had been running ever since the Christmas 
party, began to announce the hour of midnight. Loong 
Li, who had gone over to Mary Whitehall with hot things 
for her and her helpers, had not yet returned. Elizabeth 
decided to wait for him. 

“You haven’t answered my question, yet,” she said to 
Anthony. “Is there any one girl whom you have singled 
out from the crowd?” 

Anthony again brought his knee up within the circle 
of his arms and so, uncertainly balanced on a high 
Jacobean chair, he said, “I never specialized on any par¬ 
ticular girl. I’d be satisfied with any one out of a dozen 
I know. What I want is to feel there is some one in the 
house, waiting for me, for me —like Mother or you or 
even Julianna—someone to darn my socks and to eat 
breakfast with me. I remember when I was a kid Father 
used to come down to breakfast a fraction of a minute 
late. He’d shove aside the plate of one of us who had 
crowded next to Mother and take the place himself. 
Then Mother would draw a cup of coffee out of the shim¬ 
mering urn which we aU loved and give it to him. I 
remember the sweet way she smiled, when she handed it 
over to him. By Jove! I’d like someone like that to 
pour my coffee!” 

“We all would,” Elizabeth said gravely. “There are 
people like that in the world, coffee pourers, I mean. 


302 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Now, whom would you choose to pour yours?” Eliza¬ 
beth persisted. 

“Now that is the queer part,” Anthony said, tilting his 
chair on one slender leg to the point of a spill, and in his 
grotesque attitude making of himself a human caricature, 
“it doesn’t make any particular difference to me whom I 
marry, only I want her good and sympathetic and of nat¬ 
ural common sense.” 

“Then wait.” 

“If I could have first choice,” Anthony continued, dis¬ 
regarding her interruption, “I’d take you, and my second 
choice would be Lucy Penrose. But Arch is waiting for 
you and death for Lucy Penrose.” 

“Cradle instinct, merely,” Elizabeth said with a swift 
endeavor to cover her shocked feelings at Anthony’s last 
words. 

“Damn Freud! Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!” 

Anthony sprang to his feet and plunged like a mad bull 
across the room. “That horrid little Jew professor and 
his satellites have done more damage to our generation 
than the devil ever devised. He is the devil, reincar¬ 
nated. He has broken up the homes of most of my 
friends. He has broken up yours and Arch’s and has 
laid an insidious hand on Stephen’s. The few real laws 
of life we have painfully learned with aching feet and 
torn sinews he has knocked bally west with a fling of 
dust. What the world has bled to death to learn and a 
new world has fought and bled to death to maintain, you 
cast aside as carelessly as I fling my cigarette into the 
fire. Hang it! Elizabeth, you can’t classify life and 
emotion. You can, if you choose, stick a pin through a 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


303 


dead insect and say the little beast has a proboscis nine 
inches long and a fantail, ergo he fed on auratrum lilies 
or delphiniums, or some deep-trumpeted flower. But when 
you see the same little creature flying through the air, 
winging it straight as a dart, you can’t draw a long face 
and pronounce what heavenly perfume is calling him 
from afar. Not by a jugful!” 

Elizabeth closed her eyes and waited until Anthony 
should have done. She listened fatiguedly to his tirade, 
so evidently a reaction from long silence. It was good 
for him, she thought, to get it outside his system. It was 
typical of the Slater tribe to revert to nursery traditions 
—family traditions—racial traditions. It was good for 
Anthony to shout and it didn’t hurt her. She did not 
fear him as she had once feared Arch. But then he had 
no authority, he would not strike. In the thick of a 
whirlwind of words she ventured to speak. “Anthony,” 
she said, “you have broken one of the Jacobean chairs 
you cherish.” 

Anthony stopped aghast, propped the chair against the 
wall and sat down quietly next to Elizabeth. 

“I make a mess of everything I touch,” he said 
humbly. “But you see I want a home. I want it next to 
my work. My work comes first. After that I am a man 
of violent human longings. Most men are like that and 
if women insist on being the same, if they’re going to be 
vainer of making a statue or of arguing a case in court, 
than of building up a home with a batch of children in 
it and room for a maiden aunt and a grandmother, why, 
the civilized world is going to the dogs. Hell! I can’t 
see why women aren’t satisfied with their job, without 


304 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


poaching. It’s big enough to use up all the moral force 
and intellectual power they’ve got.” 

“Simply because a human soul happens to be born in 
a woman’s body, you’d make its destiny domestic.” 

“Its destiny is fixed.” 

Not caring to discuss this question with Anthony, 
Elizabeth remained silent. Again there was a buzzing 
and wheezing in the White Wren; again the banjo clock 
had struck the hour. It was now one o’clock, more or 
less; one never could be certain. Loong Li was still with 
Mary Whitehall. 

Anthony looked gloomily at Elizabeth. “If you hadn’t 
been some ten years ahead of my game, I’d have cut Arch 
out and married you. You and I hold the world in com¬ 
mon. The same things seem important to us. And oh! 
the goodness of knowing that important things don’t 
count. We’d have respected each other’s work and 
shared each other’s play and you’d never have run away 
from me or abandoned your children, because you thought 
you must get into the sunshine. But you are Arch’s 
and Arch is yours, and why,” he demanded fiercely, 
“don’t you go back to him and your three boys, instead 
of wandering around loose, and tempting us poor devils 
to crime? I don’t know any one whom I love and 
respect so deeply and whom at the same time I hold to 
be so entirely in the wrong as I do you. Come to think 
about it, I blame you devilishly.” 

“Never lunge, without provocation,” Elizabeth admon¬ 
ished as she laid a cool hand on Anthony’s thin white 
knuckles. 

Anthony brought his second hand down on Elizabeth’s 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


305 


and then said in a melancholy voice, “Let’s play the old 
game. ‘Take that off or I’ll knock it off!’ Mother 
taught it to me.” 

Elizabeth, whose eyes were swimming with fatigue 
and sorrow, for as she sat in the cold April night with 
Anthony, waiting for that mysterious something to hap¬ 
pen in the House-on-the-Rock that made her heart beat 
quick, agreed to his foolish request. Some one, a nurse 
probably, had also taught her the old game: “What’s 
that?” “A chest.” “What’s in it?” “Bread and 
cheese.” “Where’s my part?” “Cat’s got it.” “Where’s 

the-” “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum—The one who speaks 

first-” 

“But it is a stupid game, Anthony,” Elizabeth said 
rising stiffly from the low sofa, where she had been sitting 
so long. She had agreed to stay at the White Wren. 
Mary did not want her. Mary had put down her foot 
somewhat heavily. What a fool she had been to let Mary 
Whitehall put down her foot. “Oh Anthony,” she said 
with a sob, “Lucy is worse. Do you know how much 
worse Lucy is? I pulled the curtains to shut out the ter¬ 
rible night and I shut out Lucy. Loong Li was to come 
back and he hasn’t come back. I believe I am very 
cold.” 

Five minutes later, after he had filled the room with 
light from the glowing fire and candles sunk deep into the 
sockets of four candelabra, Anthony sat down on the 
second Jacobean chair and again tilted himself at the 
angle of departure, while Elizabeth put on her soft grey 
cloak and reseated herself on the sofa. 

Time slipped. It was now two o’clock. Elizabeth was 




306 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


conscious that Anthony was waiting in sympathy and in 
kindness, that his imagination failed perhaps to grasp the 
truth; that he only kept awake by an untoward exertion 
of will. He was inexperienced. Even news of his 
mother’s death was not yet to him a reality. Anthony 
had talked more about Madame Slater lately, but if he 
ever returned to Boston and found the blank, why then 
he would have to suffer. Elizabeth could not visualize 
Fenway House without its head. Every home, of course, 
should have a head. Madame Slater had asked her to be 
the head of Fenway House. The bequest filled Eliza¬ 
beth with terror. To be put in her mother-in-law’s place, 
or to be put where she denied the Slater family, if not its 
rights, still its traditions, was an untoward shuffling of 
fate. And then, the blank—the blank? 

“If I ever close my eyes,” Elizabeth said, again break¬ 
ing a long silence, “when I am in front of a blazing fire 
like this and open them again suddenly, I see Aunt Fan 
in her high-backed chair seated close to the flames and 
bending her face toward mine, with a half tender, half 
critical smile, and reaching out her hand for a book or a 
ball of yarn. And there on either side of me are my two 
collies, waiting with patient eyes for their pats, till as 
you know—Anthony! Anthony! Lucy Penrose! Did 
you hear nothing?” 

“I heard nothing,” Anthony said firmly. “There is 
such a beastly storm rushing down the valley one might 
imagine anything.” 

“Lucy is dead. Loong Li has just left Mary White¬ 
hall. He was outside Lucy’s door. He has come down¬ 
stairs.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


307 


“Impossible!” Anthony again said firmly. “You 
couldn’t hear him so far away on a clear night, and in 
such a storm as this-” 

“There, the gate clicked. You heard the gate click?” 

“It might have been anything.” Anthony spoke stub¬ 
bornly. 

But the house door of the White Wren pushed open 
and Loong shuffled into the hall. 

Filled with indecisions, Loong hesitated in the dark 
entrance-way, his sagging figure weirdly silhouetted 
against the night, a lantern dangling low from his left 
hand, a closed umbrella from his right. He stood quite 
still in a circle of light cast by his lantern. Anthony 
imagined him a figure hewn of stone. Conquering this 
fancy, he crossed the hall and closed the door for the old 
Chinaman. 

“Mrs. Whitehall has sent for me. I expected it, 
Loong,” Elizabeth said, as she bent to put on her over¬ 
shoes. 

“Not now. She come over to see you, maybe soon. 
She say, you go to bed.” 

“Lucy is dead,” Elizabeth again said, as she scanned 
Loong Li’s yellow face. 

“Mrs. Whitehall call me and I go quick into the room 
of Miss Lucy. Before she say any words, Miss Lucy 
draw a long breath and,”—Loong Li sent forth a dry 
whistling note from his throat and the circle of light in 
which he stood vanished, for his breath had snuffed out 
the lantern. 

Anthony rushed into the living-room and brought out 
one of the candelabra with its three flickering candles. 



308 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


He found Elizabeth leaning against the cold wall, her 
hands clenched, her eyes closed. 

“Mrs. Whitehall say tell you, Doctor Williams is 
there,” Loong Li continued. “And the man who makes 
of the body ashes is there, and the man of the laws is 
there. It is enough. Do not come.” 

Elizabeth turned and walked swiftly down the hall to 
the stone stairway. Before she disappeared into the 
dark above, she turned and looked down at the two men 
who stood watching her. “Good night,” she said 
gently. “Loong Li, lock up the house, please, and give 
Mr. Slater something hot.” 

“I don’t want anything hot; I don’t want anything, at 
all,” Anthony said fiercely to the old Chinaman. And 
grabbing a coat off a peg in the hall, he dashed swiftly 
out into the night. 

Loong Li again lighted his ancient lantern and having 
done his mistress’s bidding, in so far as he could with 
Anthony running away from his services, he sat down in 
the dim, freezing hall to watch the night grey into day. 

About ten minutes after the clocks had done striking 
six, Loong Li rose from the irregular stone floor and 
opened the house door. 

“Good morning, Loong,” Mary Whitehall said with no 
apparent surprise. “I think we are going to have a clear 
day. Where is Mr. Anthony? Has he gone to bed?” 

Loong Li pointed down the valley. 

“He went out in the storm?” 

Loong Li nodded. 

“And your mistress, she is in her room?” 

Again Loong Li nodded. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


309 


As Elizabeth had done four hours earlier, Mary White¬ 
hall hastened down the dreary hall and climbed the stone 
stairway with its two hitches in its rises. Realizing that 
Loong Li was in tragic mood, she paused at the top of 
the stairway as Elizabeth had paused and looked down 
upon the pathetic figure on the stone flagging. “You 
have been very kind, Loong,” she said, “and I thank 
you. You have a tender heart. There are many things 
to be attended to, today. I depend upon you to render 
Mrs. Slater what services you can.” 

Mary Whitehall brought the frosty spring air into 
Elizabeth’s room with her. “It is going to be a beauti¬ 
ful spring day,” she said. “The temperature must have 
risen ten degrees in the night. The saffron and purple 
crocuses have opened their eyes to the sun.” 

Elizabeth watched Mary as she moved about the room, 
swiftly closing the windows on the windward side, rekin¬ 
dling the smouldering wood fire and delicately putting a 
bunch of yellow crocuses, golden bubbles of light, in a 
glass bowl. When it came her turn to die, she would 
choose to have Mary Whitehall with her; she was so 
swift, so still, so sure of her movements. Mary would 
carry through her duties then as she had now, with a 
steadiness to make jealous the stars in heaven. The 
habitual gravity of her expression, slightly accentuated 
by the final services she had given the dead, stirred in 
Elizabeth an unwonted reverence. She wished very 
much that Mary would speak of Lucy. 

“I have ordered coffee for both of us,” Mary said after 
a short absence from the room. “It will be good to be 
thoroughly warm. When I have eaten something, I shall 


310 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


sleep until nine. There is nothing more I can do until 
then. After that there are painful services. You can’t 
know without experience. Will you leave them to me? 
Oh, my dear, those final, necessary, trivial acts wrench 
the soul. Each loss opens wide the gates to eternity 
through which we all must pass alone. For each man 
must pay the final debt to nature. Death is forever a 
mystery. But the great mystery is life which, by mastery 
of ourselves, alone, we may make noble and in a few rare 
cases, beautiful. You who read the Greek poets remem¬ 
ber, ‘Things of a day! What are we and what are we 
not! A shadow’s dream is man!’ ” 

Mary Whitehall turned away from the window where 
she had been staring at the dull purple mountain. “The 
fogs are lifting,” she said cheerfully. “This will be one 
of those rare days when we can see the summit of Moel 
Hebog. Later in the afternoon, a walk will do us both 
good.” 

Mary Whitehall bent low over Elizabeth and kissed 
her. And then she told her about Lucy who had passed 
into the unknown with no knowledge of the passing. 


Part V 

WORLD WITHOUT END 









CHAPTER I 


Lucy Penrose was buried in the world-old graveyard, 
guarded by two ancient yew trees and the tiny stone 
church with the lancet windows. After the service for 
the dead had been read, transformed by some strange 
alchemy from the service of the God of our fathers to 
a dramatic pagan lament, Elizabeth and Mary Whitehall 
and Anthony passed down Leaf Lane in exalted mood. 

It was the trolling quality of the Welsh music that 
got into your blood and aroused the devils of restlessness, 
that ailed them all, Anthony explained to himself, as 
he watched his two companions marching by his side, 
their expression set, their thoughts tragic, their feet mov¬ 
ing rhythmically along to the mighty recessional that 
had followed them out of the church and into the grave¬ 
yard and so, thunderingly, hauntingly on down through 
sorrowing ages. A thought hit Anthony that made him 
lose step. That same music had been sung, likewise, at 
his mother’s funeral. Julianna had written it. Likewise, 
was his mother dead. He had never been able, before, 
to think that his mother was dead; that the same 
strange thing could happen to her that had happened to 
Lucy Penrose. Anthony again fell into step still meas¬ 
ured to the haunting rhythm of the recessional. 

When they reached the stone bridge, Mary Whitehall 
broke the silence to suggest a walk up into the hills 
before entering the White Wren. “For, on a day like 
this,” she said, “there is nothing so good as to be blown 
313 


314 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


upon by the winds and to be warmed by the sun. I was,” 
she continued, after they had come out on a broad 
mountain path that wound along the foothills of the 
Snowdon range, “nurse in a base hospital for two years 
and afterwards for another eighteen months in a hospital 
ship. I could not tell you what visions the service for the 
dead sets galloping through my mind, one riding fast 
upon the heels of another until I am dazed by them. It 
is well to forget,” she added vigorously, as she slid a 
comforting hand through Elizabeth’s and turned sharply 
toward a cliff that led steeply up toward the Rhyyd Thu 
pass. 

Two days later, Mary Whitehall took the down train 
for London and a patient who sorely needed her care. At 
the same hour, Lize returned home, bubbling full of 
pranks learned from the big family of red-headed boys 
the vague rector failed either to realize or to discipline. 

“Gosh, all hemlocks!” Lize snapped boldly, as she 
stared hard at her mother. “Gosh, all hemlocks!” 

“That becomes monotonous,” Elizabeth suggested. 
“What else do you want to say?” 

“Hell fire! I’ll be dog gone, if I know! Curse it!” 

“You aren’t clever enough to make it impressive,” 
Elizabeth said critically. “You must have a lot of fire 
and temper to swear successfully, or else a sort of artis¬ 
tic sense that carries it through. I wouldn’t be down¬ 
cast. Those words may come in handy some day when 
you will be forced to use them. Otherwise, they sound 
silly.” 

“The whole shooting match got a licking for ventur¬ 
ing to use curse words,” Lize continued, “and in addition, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


315 


I was to tell you and get a second. But families are dif¬ 
ferent. We don’t lick.” 

“All things are possible,” Elizabeth said guardedly, 
while she attempted to fit Lize’s new vocabulary into the 
English classics for children, the only books she would be 
likely to read at the rectory. The cause for this sudden 
outburst she considered serious enough, for she believed 
it indicated some unhealthy suppression that might 
hamper Lize’s normal development. Having scientifically 
psychoanalyzed her daugher’s mental condition, and hav¬ 
ing found her diagnosis consistent with her knowledge of 
Lize’s temperament, she decided to find for her a new 
outlet for her crowding energy. She bought a hunting 
saddle and put her on the Welsh pony which had proved 
to be but half-trained, with a mouth toughened by care¬ 
less usage, and a spirited if not vicious nature. 

Anthony, who listened attentively to Elizabeth’s tale of 
her unregenerate daughter, and her reasons for letting her 
ride the pony, said he could see no difference between 
her very sensible conclusions, and any other mother’s 
except in vocabulary. He preferred the natural maternal 
blague to Freudian junk in the bringing up of children. 
It was at least simpler. But he didn’t think much of 
parental training. “Turn children into a pen and let 
them discipline each other,” he advised. “What Lize 
needs is her brothers’ selfishness to butt her character 
against.” 

Elizabeth laughed delicately, to cover the sting in 
Anthony’s speech. There was sense in his advice, per¬ 
haps. But she didn’t dare to take up the gauntlet; she 
didn’t even dare to think his words through. “Perhaps 


316 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


I have grown to be a little hard but that, I sometimes 
think, is a good thing and it happens to most people— 
about the boys, I mean—and Arch-” 

They were seated on the green bench by the hawthorne 
tree, where she and Lucy had spent so many hours, the 
summer before. It was an enchanting May day. The 
sun shone warm and flickering shadows kept drifting 
across the grass. Elizabeth felt more inclined to dream 
than to quarrel. “We are like moles,” she said drowsily, 
“that have crept into the light after having lived all 
winter below the frost line—or maybe woodchucks. 
Moles wouldn’t, of course.” 

Anthony was dejected, for he wanted to talk about 
Arch and he couldn’t somehow manage it. He didn’t 
understand himself, altogether. He only knew this was 
a subject about which he was keen. In spite of Eliza¬ 
beth’s amiable mood, she was acutely on guard. A few 
days later he must go to London to complete the draw¬ 
ings he had to make for the inside trim of Harlech House. 
He made a resolution to have it out, anyhow, looked 
again at Elizabeth, whose mood had mysteriously changed, 
and with a feeling of being beaten, let his resolution 
flicker out. The tragic gravity of her face troubled him. 
“What are you thinking about?” he asked abruptly, hop¬ 
ing she would say, “About my sons,” or—“About Arch.” 

“My unfinished work,” she answered promptly. “Life 
throws me on one jagged rock and then another till I am 
without breath. My hours are full of—what? Not 
what I choose to do, but with what life chooses me to do. 
It’s a repetition of the ancient tale of the pot and the 
potter. I am as chaff blown whither the wind listeth.” 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


317 


“See here, Elizabeth, if you are quoting Scripture, 
make a more accurate stab for it.” 

“But I am not. I am merely making a crazy transla¬ 
tion from a minor Greek poet,” she said with a slight 
tremor in her voice. “Up in Lucy’s room, delicately 
stowed away in chests and closets are piles of beautiful 
undergarments and soft-colored frocks. These I must 
pack and send to some distant Penrose cousin in Wood- 
stock, Vermont. I want to do it, of course. I want 
to do it now—and yet, what a day for real work—some¬ 
thing positive.” 

After Lucy’s trunks had been sent to America and 
Anthony had returned to London, she was overcome by a 
loneliness that terrified. There were days when black 
silence enveloped her. She was sorry for herself. She 
was shocked to find herself beset with what she most 
despised, self-pity. 

One day, she climbed halfway up Snowdon and, far 
below her in a small purple valley, set with four round 
pools like polished emeralds, she saw a white cross that 
had not been there the autumn before. There was a 
cross, she remembered, in the next valley, that marked the 
spot where an Oxford don had lost his life. What 
tragedy did this new cross commemorate, she asked her¬ 
self. Lucy’s? It was about where she imagined Lucy 
fell. Elizabeth looked piercingly down the thousand feet 
of treacherous shale that dropped to the white spot below. 
The cross seemed to be crudely made and unevenly 
painted. It would be a strange and illogical monument 
for anyone to place to Lucy. To get to the spot must 
have been an act of daring and skill. The cross could 


318 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


have been carried only over the perilous trail the guides 
had taken to reach Lucy. It was an adventurous deed 
and dangerous. Elizabeth frowned. She would have 
been glad to commemorate the brave deed of the res¬ 
cue party, but not with a cross. Curious, she had been 
told nothing about it! Why had she been told nothing 
about it? Neither she nor Anthony had known what 
the village people were doing. But was it the people? 

Suddenly, Elizabeth’s face went white, and she sped 
home with swift feet. “Loong Li,” she called as she 
went into the White Wren, “I want Lize. Where is 
Lize?” 

And the wizened Chinaman, the producer of all good 
things, with his customary adequacy, produced Lize. 

In a breathless ten minutes, Elizabeth learned a strange 
story. “It was the work of our gang,” Lize ended com¬ 
placently. 

“You are such a baby, weren’t you terrified?” 

“Well, rather!” 

“I can’t understand-” 

“Oh! William Jones, the joiner, helped us. We bribed 
him. He carried down the scantlings, that’s what it is 
made of, and nailed them together and anchored them 
with chains and stones. And when the cross was to¬ 
gether, we painted it. If you think that is some going, 
you ought to see us racing the tides beyond Harlech 
House. I am no good, but the boys! Huh! Naturally,” 
Lize added conscientiously, for she saw a strange light in 
her mother’s eyes, “Uncle Ant dreams I’m playing with 
a pail and shovel, digging holes in the sand, and letting 
the sea come up and all that baby ruck.” 



CHAPTER II 


Since the early morning mail, Elizabeth had left lift- 
opened on her desk a letter from Arch. It had come 
along with one from Julianna and one from the Wood- 
stock Penrose who had a strange tale to tell of Spanish 
crown jewels Lucy carried about with her, sewn into her 
silk petticoat. She threatened suit if they were not deliv¬ 
ered into her keeping. Julianna’s letter was a budget of 
facts about Fenway House. 

“Now that you are chatelaine,” Julianna wrote pic¬ 
turesquely, “there are a thousand facts you must know 
about the house and the family.” Thereupon followed 
seven pages of facts, plainly stated. Elizabeth began to 
realize, as she read them through, how dear the home was 
to Julianna and how completely she was in her element 
when counting napkins and folding about each dozen a 
linen band exquisitely embroidered with the name of her 
mother. Things that were meaningless to her rounded 
Julianna’s life to a happy completeness. There was a 
simple goodness about her that she was forced to admire. 
Elizabeth’s thoughts winged their way back to Aunt Fan. 
If Aunt Fan had left Blowmedown to any one else in the 
world but Elizabeth Duncan, the tigers of jealousy would 
have been let loose in her soul. And yet Blowmedown 
was not a religion with her as the Georgian mansion was 
with her sister-in-law. It might be well to remember it 
was the Slater roof-tree over which she, an in-law and an 
alien, had been made mistress. One passage in Julianna’s 
letter made her wince. 


319 


320 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“It would break my heart,” she read, “if Fenway 
House should drift rudderless. To my stupefaction, 
Mother once considered leaving the home to me instead 
of to you and Arch. But I knew and she knew you had 
the bolder spirit . . . the power to carry through. I 
loved it too much to take it. The warden of the keys 
lay between us and I stood aside. Mother, I remember, 
was well pleased with me. Who of us will ever forget 
her calm, beautiful smile when she was pleased?” 

An admonition of Aunt Fan’s shot through Elizabeth’s 
mind, “The day will come when you will have power. 
The essence of noble living is to use power justly and 
graciously.” 

Elizabeth had taken Julianna’s letter out on the hills 
to think it through. When she had reached the spot 
where the summer before she had loved to sit and feel the 
world spin, she found herself looking straight down upon 
Lucy’s cross and, with terror in her heart, she rushed 
home in quest of Lize. The realization of her daughter’s 
easy recklessness and of the surrounding perils crowded 
out any puzzlement that Aunt Fan and Julianna had 
raised in her soul, over duty and benignity and gracious¬ 
ness: puzzlements that had seemed to be endangering her 
liberty, but had been swiftly reduced to abstractions by 
the memory of Lize’s folly. 

On her way to bed, Elizabeth let her mind drift back 
to Julianna’s letter and to Madame Duncan. It seemed 
treacherous and disloyal to criticize even for one instant 
of eternity, anything that Aunt Fan had ever said or 
thought. Yet her admonitions, Elizabeth felt, sometimes 
bordered on the superficial. At least, they concerned a 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


321 


code of manners that was extinct and moralities that had 
proved themselves all but meaningless. The essence of 
life was life. Good manners were the result of right 
living and by right living she did not mean a bit what 
Aunt Fan meant. Benignity and graciousness suggested 
to her mind, not fine manners, but fine mannerisms. 

It was very late. Elizabeth reluctantly blew out the 
flickering candles in the wall-sockets and jumped into 
bed, lest a vague something under the bed catch her heels. 
She had reverted to this childish habit since she had been 
living in the White Wren with its dark corners swiftly 
closing in upon her whenever she put out the lights. Not 
that she feared anything; she was attached to the old inn 
and especially to her own room, where the wind hung 
broodingly close to the roof, and a thousand night per¬ 
fumes drifted in at the windows. 

Propped up by pillows, Elizabeth snapped on her elec¬ 
tric night lantern and turned Arch’s letter over in her 
hand. Her reply to his request had been unequivocal. 
Why had he written again? Her impulse was to return 
unopened the square, heavily sealed envelope. That, she 
knew, would be unfair, and possibly inconvenient. But 
it took courage to read his letter. For there was nothing 
in this world or in eternity that he would not sacrifice 
to the needs of his three blue-eyed sons. He was now 
convinced that they needed her and he had determined 
to bring her home. What new force had he summoned 
to his aid. 

The letter was written from Fenway House. 

With despair in her heart, she broke the black seal and 
opened the heavy linen envelope. Contrary to his cus- 


k 


322 FETTERS OF FREEDOM 

tom, the letter was typed. There were to be no mistakes 
as to facts. 

“Dear Elizabeth: 

“People are eternally seeing life more clearly. Since 
Mother died and I read her will, I have seen life, if not 
more clearly, at least from a new angle. Not one of us 
is strong enough to live unto himself—a quote, slightly 
garbled. Mother, who was brewed in wisdom, knew this. 
I can now see she did not foolishly choose her bondage. 
With rare vision she saw and accepted her limitations 
and, by this acceptance, gained a wider freedom than it 
is our destiny to gain by yielding to that deep-rooted and 
natural craving for a liberty which makes for disinte¬ 
gration. 

“Do you believe that you have gone the right way about 
it to gain your freedom? Does not life still clamp you 
down? From Anthony’s letters, I know what a sorrow 
and anxiety Lucy has been to you. Anthony, himself, 
is no light burden. You have not shirked. He also 
writes that Satterlee is a good deal of a failure and a 
sapper, eternally taking with no returns. By this time 
you can scarcely fail to recognize the fact that, no matter 
where you go or what you do, you have the temperament 
and the moral character that force you to carry on. After 
reflection, would you not in your heart prefer to devote 
this splendid and unfailing energy to your three sons 
rather than to comparative strangers? Mother believed 
you would; I begin to hope that she may have been right. 

“I cannot disguise the fact that you found your union 
with me a burden. I cannot believe it is necessary to 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


323 


assure you that I am unwilling to cripple your life. If 
you decide to return to your three sons and to Fenway 
House, where I am determined to have the boys brought 
up in the New England tradition, within the limits of my 
slow imagination, I will do what I can to free you from 
the burden of my existence. The accomplishment will 
be more easy, inasmuch as I am now wholly inter¬ 
ested in forestry and I plan to spend much of my time 
in the Northwest, coming home only occasionally to see 
the boys. 

“I do not find it possible to put down on paper what 
I want you to know. I shall have to leave it to you to 
understand. The sordidness of words gets me by the 
neck. Anyhow, there are two more things I must make 
clear. Your sons need you. The laxity of morals in boys’ 
boarding schools is enough to make your heart ache. 
They are as rotten as they were in my day. They also 
need Lize. The civilizing influence of a sister might tame 
them. The boys have changed very much within a year. 
Either the lack of your even hand, or a demi-savage 
summer spent in lumber camps, has turned them into 
wild colts. 

“The admirable Preston, I am forced to believe, is 
contemplating marriage. If I question the beneficence of 
the last year upon the three boys, I must admit it has 
restored to their governess health and a modicum of 
halting beauty. Actually, blood never runs from a cut 
turnip. 

“I am sailing for England, the second of June. 

“I am writing this letter in advance so you may not 
be wholly unprepared for my arrival. This will also give 


324 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


you an opportunity to reconsider a subject which I am 
unwilling to believe you have settled with finality. 

“Ever yours in confidence, 

“Archibald Slater.” 

“What a dreary, dreary letter,” Elizabeth cried aloud 
as she flung her pillow aside, preparatory for sleep. “How 
his pride gets in the way of his pen!” 

“That is what he thinks—what does he feel?” 


CHAPTER III 


When Archibald Satterlee finally left fog-besieged 
London for the South, he followed Doctor Pontillionni’s 
advice and took with him for companionship, Jake 
Middaw, a young physician who had lately finished his 
two years of hospital training, but who did not have 
sufficient funds to establish a practice for himself. It 
seemed incredible that any young man could be so well 
set up and so poor as this very young doctor. What 
money he had went into his clothes. He was living 
upon bread and molasses, the final diet of the impecuni¬ 
ous, he explained to Satterlee. 

Satterlee, well pleased with Middaw’s impecuniosity, 
offered him a thousand pounds if he would bring him 
home from the islands of the iEgean in a fit condition. 
“Now, if ever, you need money,” he argued, “and now, 
if ever, I need health. It is an arrangement: your first 
start in life and my second.” 

But the very young doctor who smiled somewhat sar¬ 
donically at this offer, remained silent. 

Satterlee looked at him with furtive eyes. “For all 
the king’s men and all the king’s horses can’t set Humpty 
Dumpty back again,” he sneered. “ That is what you 
are thinking, young man! Hell! In your trade, there 
is no such word as can’t. And though I am fallen, 
I am not in pieces. Hang it! My mind is in chaos from 
the fall. If everything in it could speak, the world would 
be pandemonium. Anyway, you’d better take me up.” 

325 


326 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Jake Middaw did take Satterlee up: he took him up 
in a hand of vise, and he refused to loosen his grip. “I 
am going to prove to Pontillionni that I am what he said 
you were and aren’t: the ’nth man. Anyhow, he knew 
you wern’t the worsted motto he feeds out to his dope 
patients. All his nervlings get it. He calls it a fighting 
chance, but I say it’s a forlorn hope. Believe me, when 
a hope gets to be forlorn, I put my money up on some¬ 
thing else and that something else is generally brute force. 
No, you can’t go out alone,” Middaw said sharply, as 
he brought his fist down on Satterlee’s shoulder with a 
blow that sent him limply into a chair. “We are going 
down to those ancient olive trees you were so poetical 
about last week, and you will read me Euripides. I want 
to improve your intervals. For, while you are a middling 
good Greek student, you don’t know anything about read- 
it aloud. Your accents are rotten. I am going to teach 
them to you. Darn it! No! You can’t go by your 
lonesome.” 

The very young doctor found an odd excitement in his 
conversations with the distinguished American, for in his 
London world, Satterlee’s plays were very much admired. 
He said whatever came into his head and he said it hard. 
To gain a few minutes’ time, he dared anything. It was 
contrary to his instincts and his training to be discour¬ 
teous, but he found the civilized tenth part of his nature 
ineffectual when dealing with Satterlee. His' patient’s 
mind seemed to be worn smooth. 

Middaw linked his arm into Satterlee’s and dragged 
him out into the sunlight. “You weren’t always the kind 
of man that has to be supported by a Van Dyck beard, 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


327 


damn it!” he said as he felt of Satterlee’s arm. “You 
weren’t always soft; your muscles have gone flabby. I 
know what you are after,” he added, after a slight hesi¬ 
tation, “I will do this much for you. I will give you four 
minutes’ start and if you can make the post office before 
I do, why you can get anything the town has to offer with 
no interference from me.” 

Satterlee, the instant he felt Middaw’s hand relax, 
bolted down the long white street. Precisely four minutes 
later, Middaw followed in his footsteps. “A forlorn hope. 
I knew it!” the young man said as he laid his hand on 
Satterlee’s arm, at least forty rods from the office. “You 
may try again, tomorrow, and now for the ripping Greek 
tragedian! ” 

As the weeks passed, Middaw’s interest in his case 
increased. He could build up Satterlee’s muscles, bronze 
his cheeks, get his body and his nerves into something 
resembling a normal state: possibly as normal as that of 
thousands of men who walk the streets of London and 
are useful citizens. But his fundamentals were weak. 
That was disappointing. The silvery irresponsibility to 
life’s demands that made for enchantment in his plays 
was an integral part of the man’s own nature and in daily 
living made for anything but enchantment. Mr. Satter¬ 
lee would return to London to all appearances fully 
recovered. But, forever after, he would need a keeper. 
A clever young doctor or possibly a woman wholly de¬ 
voted to him might furnish the will power for an abste¬ 
mious life. But he wasn’t worth the price. A succession 
of impecunious medical students would do the job with 
less sacrifice. One fact at least was distinct in Mid- 


328 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


daw’s mind, Satterlee himself was incompetent for the 
position. 

Pontillionni, whose interest had been stirred by Mid¬ 
daw’s letters concerning his patient, motored to the 
pier to meet the two men on their return to England. 
The travelers, their clear-cut figures silhouetted against 
the shining blue of the sky, stood apart from the throng 
of wind-blown passengers that blurred the clear white 
lines of the ship. Pontillionni looked at them with a 
fierce interest, long before they discovered his presence. 
Satterlee walks like a dog in leash, he thought as he came 
forward to greet them. Middaw had brought home a 
well trained hound. But when he gripped Satterlee’s 
hand, he met a firm, calm grasp that indicated improved 
nerves. 

“What he needs is a keeper,” Middaw explained his 
theory the next day to Pontillionni. 

“ A life for a life! Sapristi! Is he worth that much? 
Do you know his writings? Are they anything more than 
a posture and an exhalation of carbon dioxide? There is 
a woman whom he loves in his fashion of loving. Already 
she has known tragedy. She is, I believe, capable of 
unlimited rashness. Is he worth the final and complete 
sacrifice she would have to make to keep him tethered? 
What do you think, Middaw?” 

“I refuse to answer that. He is my masterpiece, you 
must remember,” the very young doctor added with a 
grin. 

Pontillionni looked vexedly at his handsome Italian 
boots of the very finest leather and workmanship; then 
he tiptoed about the room as if he were trying them out 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


329 


and finding them too narrow, as they obviously were; 
and then he swore. He roared rhythmically in his own 
tongue with a hitching cadence to his sonorous tones that 
indicated puzzlement rather than wrath. 

“He cannot have her,” he said clipping his heels 
together and waving his hands in Middaw’s face. “I 
am tired of paranoiacs. If Satterlee were merely mad¬ 
dened by drugs, his case would be interesting, because 
of its cussedness. But the man’s primordials are all to 
the bad. You were right. Fundamentally, he is a well- 
bred bounder.” 

Pontillionni shrugged his shoulders as he saw Mid¬ 
daw’s face twist away from a smile. “I do not use your 
argo according to your notions,” he interpreted with rising 
impatience. “You know what I mean as I know your 
meaning when you say of people and places and events, 
dolce far niente. A sweet do nothing; that is what your 
paranoiac is. By the way, he says he loves life. What 
he tells me every time he says it is, he loves lies. He 
can’t love life with its extortionate demands laid upon 
him to pay the price. He has not dared to unshroud and 
to look into his soul. You northern peoples who pull the 
long face and look grave and magnificently dignified, and 
know so well how to seem good, haven’t the daring or 
the racial pride that thousands of inconsequential earth- 
diggers of my race have, who boldly see life as she is and 
pass on . . .” 

“Singing,” Middaw interrupted, with some danger of 
offending. 

“You have it, singing! A person like your American 
shuts his eyes to facts. Then he meanders about the 


330 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


world, violet strewn, in his imagination and dotted here 
and there with Eden-bowers twined with roses. Such a 
man is a peep-frog who, because he has always lived 
in a pool, insists there is no ocean. He is eternally 
whimsical and vastly amusing, maybe. This reckless 
age, constantly substituting play-art for work-art, pro¬ 
claims him a genius. Faugh! I accuse him of lacking 
morals and he tells me the modern world has developed 
an entirely new system of behaviour. He calls it aes¬ 
thetics. I then accuse him of shunting facts and crass 
idleness. He shouts back at me that the solitary tenet 
upon which moderns agree is divine obligation to work. 
Then I shout, ‘By their works you shall know them.’ ‘I 
am afraid you are cynical, doctor.’ T didn’t say, by 
your works you shall know them,’ I snapped back. But 
my last speech missed fire. This morning he sent me a 
thank-present, a painting of one of the advanced lights 
he worships. It is a study in bronze, being mostly three 
bananas with black stripes running their length and 
something else with greedy open mouths turned upwards 
which I guess to be pomegranates. The fruit is on a 
brass tray which is so out of drawing that it looks as if 
it were caught in a spiritual seance, turning somer¬ 
saults to convince the unbeliever that it, too, is all-soul, 
all-mind, a part of you, you a part of it. By Heavens!” 
he ended in a gust of wrath. “Satterlee is a bad per¬ 
son. We’d better ship him to his native land, back to his 
very disagreeable wife—oh! he has confided in me—and 
his noisy children. There is one thing a doctor can’t do: 
he can’t get around a rotten nature.” 

“Satterlee isn’t as hopeless as that. You thought he 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


331 


might be the ’nth man and he isn’t. You are disappointed 
in your diagnosis,” Middaw ventured boldly. 

Pontillionni stopped his rapid flight through his two 
offices to look deep into the young Englishman’s face. 
“Anyhow, I am not disappointed in you,” he shouted with 
fervour. “I have been waiting for you all my life.” 


CHAPTER IV 


It was the middle of May when Satterlee and Middaw 
returned to London. Satterlee’s chambers being still in a 
turmoil, he put up at a new and expensive hotel near the 
embankment, where he would be likely to meet new 
faces rather than old. He went to several dinner parties 
where he was invited as playwright and he found burning 
afresh his love of adulation and his adoration of London 
in the late spring. At these functions he met many 
Americans and he learned from one of these that Archi¬ 
bald Slater had sailed for England and was now, in fact, 
within a few days of landing. Mr. Slater was coming 
for his wife from whom he had been separated for a 
year or more, his wife having been delayed in Wales be¬ 
cause of an accident to her daughter’s governess. It 
seemed just a trifle odd, but the governess was a family 
friend, being one of the New England Penroses, the 
northern branch. And now she was dead, Mrs. Slater was 
about to return to America and her three orphaned 
boys. She was talking about Elizabeth Duncan Slater, of 
course, who was clever with a sort of man’s cleverness. 
Did he know she had been writing again? And had he 
seen any of her poems? Once she had published an indis¬ 
creet novel, but that was long before she had married into 
the Slater family. 

Satterlee chewed his lips. He felt his mind growing 
chaotic at the mention of Slater. Out of the blur sprung 
332 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


333 


one necessity. He must see Elizabeth at once, before 
that intolerable fool of a Slater reached her. 

About ten o’clock the morning following this dinner 
party, after the painful stupefaction of sleep had left 
him, Satterlee sent a telegram to Elizabeth, announcing 
his advent on the noon train. Once out in the sunshine, 
his nerves responded beautifully to his will. He could 
laugh at the lethargy of his mind and the dead feeling of 
his body that had tortured him through an interminable 
night. He felt himself walking toward the Great Western 
with a bound in his step that rejoiced his heart. As he 
swung along, he smartly clipped his heels on the pave¬ 
ment and gaily smiled upon the world of common people 
who swarmed about the streets. Middaw had earned his 
thousand pounds all right. It was the money that had 
done it. Vainly he tried to whistle Carmen . The setting¬ 
up tunes which his phonograph reeled off for him every 
morning when he was doing Walter Camp’s Daily Dozen, 
persisted in his head till he succumbed to the prosaic 
rhythms with their interminable over-accentuations that 
made of them such useful servants. 

At the booking office, Satterlee found Anthony bar¬ 
gaining persuasively for a ticket to Bethgelert. “The old 
thief wouldn’t accept my check,” Anthony explained. 
“He wanted my watch as guarantee and I was telling him 
it was a present from my mother, when you came up.” 

“What have you got in your portfolio?” Satterlee 
asked after they had succeeded in securing a compart¬ 
ment to themselves and were well out of London. 

“Drawings for Harlech House. Look at them, if you 
like.” 


334 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Satterlee, fretted by the presence of Anthony, who 
was in Gothic mood, opened the case with a feeling of 
indifference. In the presence of the stronger man, his 
own cheerful spirits had greyed out. Such exuberance 
was gauche and untoward. “Gad!” he exclaimed with 
quick appreciation, “these drawings are beautiful.” 

“Yes, aren’t they?” Anthony chuckled. 

“I’d like to own that house.” 

“So’d I; and will some day, maybe.” 

The train, which had been running slowly for some 
minutes, stopped altogether in an open field. Simultane¬ 
ously, both men put their heads out the window. A small 
grey shed leaning heavily on the ground was draped in 
hawthorn, pink with bloom. The air vibrated with 
light, From a low thorn bush a lark boldly dashed up 
into the blue and burst into song. Then the train moved 
swiftly on toward the north. 

“A miracle!” 

Again the men faced each other, the rapture of the 
strange experience still shining in Anthony’s face. But 
in Satterlee’s eyes there were smouldering fires of resent¬ 
ment. He breathed deep and exhaled, one, two, three, 
four, and then he spoke. “You said a minute ago, you 
might own Harlech House. Precisely what did you mean 
by that?” 

“I might marry.” Anthony flushed slightly, as he 
made this confession. 

“Elizabeth is so much older than you,” Satterlee’s 
words sounded thick and unenunciated as he spoke them. 
“Do you hope to marry Elizabeth?” 

“Marry Elizabeth! My brother’s wife! Hell! No! ” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


335 


The men faced each other in a rage. Anger turned 
Anthony white; but it brought the blood leaping into 
Satterlee’s face and made fire of his brain. 

After five minutes, Anthony spoke again with a still 
voice that struggled to cast forth all feeling. “Arch is 
coming over to get Elizabeth. He and Elizabeth have 
inherited, together, Mother’s Boston house. He will take 
her home in a few weeks, maybe. I hope Elizabeth will 
sell me Harlech House. I have money now. But if she 
wants to make it a home for permanently disabled sol¬ 
diers, I shall say nothing about my own plans.” 

Satterlee, who held his desires and his passions less 
firmly guarded, spoke again. “Will Elizabeth go back to 
Boston with your brother to live the residue of her life 
in the Fenway horror?” 

Anthony looked his companion squarely over. In spite 
of his sun-burned skin and vaunted return to health, 
Satterlee’s nerves were raw. It would be as easy as 
rolling off a log to stir up a row, confound him! More 
easy even than falling in love with Elizabeth. Any man 
could do that who didn’t fight the inherent devils in his 
blooming instincts. 

“Will she? How do you know she will? Did she say 
it?” Satterlee’s voice persisted. 

“What business is that of yours?” 

The older man pulled himself up like a shot and then 
relaxed. Anthony, who was watching him closely, sus¬ 
pected he was doing part of his cure business, as he re¬ 
peated the action six times. After a while, Satterlee 
again turned his attention to the plans for Harlech 
House. 


336 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Elizabeth and I have always been very good friends,” 
he said. “I am closely attached to her for countless 
reasons. What she does concerns me, as it must you, 
very deeply. Her marriage, you must pardon me, has 
never seemed to me fortunate.” 

Anthony remained silent, for he could never, as long as 
the world spun around, discuss Arch’s wife with Satterlee. 

Two hours later, Elizabeth met the two men at the 
station. 

“Didn’t you get my message?” she asked Satterlee. “I 
telegraphed you not to come. Loong Li bears you a 
hatred which I fear. I cannot risk tragedy. You will 
have to go on to Port Madoc or Harlech.” 

“I can’t go on. There is something I must say to 
you, Elizabeth,” Satterlee declared as he backed away 
from the train which had begun to move again. 

Anthony cocked a scornful eye at Satterlee. The man 
was infernally wrong, but Elizabeth was quite capable of 
settling him. They’d both prefer it that way, he imagined 
as he doubled up his fists. So he took Prudence Dodge 
and hurried toward Port Madoc, while Elizabeth and 
Satterlee walked more slowly down the valley road where 
they would have a fine fight, Satterlee getting the worst 
of it, poor devil! 

As Prudence Dodge flew forty plus along the sun- 
flecked roads, Anthony smiled broadly upon the shim¬ 
mering, green-flecked world which met his advance in 
friendly fashion. His mind wavered away from Eliza¬ 
beth to a memory and a hope he had held precious since 
early spring. Suddenly his mood turned black. Arch 
and Elizabeth were the best people he knew. Who was 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


337 


he that he should expect a happier fate than theirs? Mar¬ 
riage for them had been a darned failure. 

The cellars of Harlech House were already completed 
and masons had begun the delicate laying of the super¬ 
structure. It was a wonderful stone he had to work with, 
being neither purple nor grey nor blue, but the three 
colors in one. He could see, now that the walls had 
begun to rise, how really beautiful it was. Having 
walked twice around the cellar, Anthony sat down on a 
yellow dune and watched the reflection of the lowering 
sun in a tourmaline green sea, while Prudence cooled her 
bearings and a Welsh mason brewed tea for him in a 
sand cave the men had built for themselves. 

“I bet a bob,” Anthony said to Himself, “that Satterlee 
will be gone when I get back to the White Wren.” “I 
bet you two he won’t,” Himself said to Anthony. “I’ll 
take you up at three,” Anthony said to Himself. “I’ll 
go you one better,” Himself again said. “Done!” 
Thereupon he opened his purse and took out seven bobs. 
Four he put in the upper right-hand pocket of his Nor¬ 
folk jacket and three in the upper left-hand pocket. 

A foolish expression passed over Anthony’s face. It 
vanished only to reappear and hover about his eyes and 
mouth. He pulled out his purse again and punched it. 
One side was bulky with new banknotes, the other heavy 
with silver. He had had it with him, then, in the sta¬ 
tion. He was an awful ass. He could only commiserate 
any girl unlucky enough to marry him. Anthony dug his 
heels into the sand and frowned upon the broad waters 
of the North Sea. The trouble with most marriages, he 
supposed, was that people didn’t seem to have any saving 


338 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


sense of humor. That was the trouble with Arch. He 
couldn’t laugh. Satterlee could, most charmingly. For 
this reason he had once attracted Elizabeth. But how 
much did he attract her now, hang it! How much? He 
ought to have remained with Elizabeth. It was a slov¬ 
enly trick to leave her at the mercy of a snide like 
Satterlee. Any man who talked ten minutes with Eliza¬ 
beth was half in love with her, poor devil! He’d be dog 
goned, if he would have people cocking amorous glances 
at his wife! He’d rather marry a red-headed girl with 
freckles and a pug nose. At this point, Anthony rose 
restlessly and crossed to the foundations of Harlech 
House where, with the mfaster builder, he went over the 
day’s work, accepting or rejecting the laying of each 
stone, according to the perfection of its workmanship. 

After Anthony had chugged down Port Madoc road, 
Elizabeth left the station closely followed by Satterlee. 
Avoiding the White Wren, she crossed the two stone 
bridges and turned toward a path on the wooded side of 
the river. Here was a rock-ledge, where she liked to sit 
and look down Aber Glasslyn Pass. Having taken her 
favorite position, she waited for Satterlee to make him¬ 
self comfortable and say whatever he had to say. But 
he remained silent for a space. By turning her position 
slightly she could see him sitting inertly on a crumbling 
log, his eyes fixed vaguely on Aber Glasslyn. There was 
about him a new air of self-sufficiency, more repellent to 
her than his breakdown. Self-sufficiency was a clumsy 
word to describe a personality as intricate as his. He 
wore this acquired manner as he might wear a mackintosh 
on a stormy day, buttoned high about his throat, but 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


339 


swinging loose about his knees, half ready to be cast 
aside. In the New England days, what he had wanted, 
he had wanted eagerly. Now she felt beneath his new 
complacency a shadow of the old flame. Doctor 
Pontillionni had created for him a strong body, could he 
also evoke, by some mysterious alchemy, a strong spirit? 
Elizabeth, grappling with an unanswered problem and 
engrossed by a new aspect of Satterlee’s case, let her 
eyes again wander down the mountain pass, till they 
focused on the flight of pine trees she and Mary White¬ 
hall had found so beautiful. 

“Elizabeth,” Satterlee said sharply, “I see renunciation 
in your countenance.” 

“You are speaking with derision. ,, 

“Do not imagine your present position is impregnable. 
With such a nature as yours, recantation is impossible.” 

“What is your indictment?” 

Elizabeth fixed her clear dark eyes upon Satterlee with 
curiosity. He seemed tame. The inner fires of his nature 
burned low. He was, she believed, seeking to break down 
the barriers between them, to make of her life a disrup¬ 
tion, if necessary. The hallmark of fine racial distinction 
alone saved him from seeming common. 

“You know your husband has sailed for England?” he 
asked. 

“Yes.” 

“And that he is coming directly to Wales?” 

“He wrote me so.” 

“To take you back to Boston to be the saving grace of 
the Slater family?” 

“Just barely possible.” 


340 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Are you going?” 

“Do you imagine it?” 

“I do.” 

“Why?” Elizabeth pronounced this last word ever so 
gently. Satterlee might answer her or not, as he chose 
to hear. 

“Then you have given up!” 

“My fighting phagocytes were never in better form. 
Each day I am mustering thousands of new troops. And 
you must remember they have the advantage, for they 
are on their own ground.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

“Nothing-” 

“Yes you do. You mean you are ready to fight it out 
with Archibald Slater.” 

“I am not going to run.” 

“Then he wins. There is no solidity in you. You are 
capricious.” 

“ ‘Legitimate caprice,’ ” Elizabeth said, quoting the 
text of what had once been his favorite preachment. 

Satterlee snatched back at a fleeting memory, but 
fumbled his catch. “You are very happy this afternoon,” 
he accused. “Is it because Slater is coming?” 

“Happiness is the grace of God.” 

“It may be a matter of temperament; I call it chance 
of birth. But I scarcely traveled up from London on a 
confounded local to discuss abstract happiness with 
you.” 

“There was a time when this May day, merely this 
day, would have been enough to account for the sum of 
human happiness, concentrated for you, maybe in a 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


341 


flower at your feet, or a blade of grass, or a fugitive leaf. 
Why trouble your mind with vain imaginings?” 

“Why do I imagine vain things? That is what I am 
here to discover. Are you going home with Slater?” 

Elizabeth rose angrily to her feet. “He may not even 
v/ant me,” she said. 

“You are a beautiful woman, more beautiful than I 
have ever known you to be. He will be mad for 
you!” 

“We have lived beyond that.” 

“Maybe Slater has. But you haven’t and I haven’t. 
You and I are the same kind of people. We were born 
into the world for each other. If it hadn’t been for 
that damnable early marriage of mine, you would have 
been my wife.” 

“There was a time when I would have gone to the 
world’s end with you, if you had said ‘Come.’ But you 
did not dare.” 

“Now, I dare. Elizabeth, come! Come with me to 
world’s end.” 

“Where there is nothing but slag and cinders.” 

“Where there is delicate and true understanding. 
Elizabeth, we need each other. Don’t you understand? 
We have made for ourselves Sahara deserts of loneliness. 
It is not good to be solitary. You live too much by your¬ 
self. I see it in your face. And I—I am tottering on 
the brink of hell-fire, because I attempted to live out my 
life in solitude. I failed. And now I am afraid. It’s 
devilish, how afraid I am. Sometimes it is places I fear, 
and sometimes it is people, and sometimes it is merely 
an idea fixed.” 


342 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Now that Doctor Pontillionni has helped you to 
master your habit of taking opium-” 

“But the temptation, can’t you understand, the temp¬ 
tation may swing back upon me any second, like a flash 
from hell-fire. If you were with me, always with me, 
I should no longer fear being engulfed by hideous 
longings.” 

Elizabeth again faced Aber Glasslyn Pass, lest she 
show in her eyes pity bordering upon scorn. For she saw 
now that Satterlee had always feared life. It was this 
softness, likely, that had stirred in the dauntless Slaters, 
a contemptuous dislike hard to account for. Her own 
sympathy for him, which she had held sacred, she found 
changing to something akin to dislike. 

“I could make you very happy,” Satterlee persisted. 
“More happy than you can know.” 

“I never liked being made happy,” Elizabeth said 
bluntly. “Since you insist upon looking at me with the 
impassioned eyes of youth I cannot help you.” 

“If Slater were not on his way here, you would feel 
differently about me,” Satterlee said. “You have chosen 
Slater.” 

“Why don’t you see that he will never forgive me 
for abandoning his three boys?” 

“Rot! You hold Slater as you hold Anthony and me, 
in the palm of your hand. Not even your haughty 
mother-in-law maintained toward you a properly offended 
manner, which was her part in your tragical drama. 
Dealing boldly in futures, she dared to leave to you— 
to you and to her pet son, Fenway House. Convention- 
ally, you were, you know, damnably wrong.” Satterlee 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


343 


jerked on a pair of owlish-looking glasses and glared 
accusingly at Elizabeth. “Even to me your actions were 
deuced queer, unless you were governed by a great 
passion. You did abandon your boys. They are reported 
a good sort. Didn’t you care for them?” 

“I had to go,” Elizabeth said. “It was a beating 
against destiny and—a flight from the limitless solitudes 
that surround us. Arch, the entire Slater clan, unless 
Anthony, have the power to stand alone. They have 
fortitude. But you and I are afraid. That is what is 
torturing you, now. You are driven by fear. Terror of 
life overwhelms you and the glory-” 

“Has departed,” Satterlee interrupted, bitterly. 

“I still feel the splendor, only a mist like the purple 
haze that hovers over the ash tree, when touched by 
frost, veils it. My timidities have diminished. I could 
live the residue of my life, alone, on a barren waste, and 
without sorrow, if I could hang on to the vision.” 

“You don’t believe what you are saying.” 

“Oh! This is not bearing up or making the best of 
it, or carrying on or anything heroic. It is the prosaic 
truth and the reason I grow tragic is my invariable rea¬ 
son. I am having difficulty with my writing. I see 
myself middle-aged and disillusioned, my days tawdry 
and shabby, and life an utter failure. It is a dismal 
prospect. My horizon line grows blue. I solemnly 
believe through agonizing days and nights I can never 
write again. I am convinced that nothing that I have 
ever done is any good and I am equally sure that when I 
skyrocketed off at a tangent, my deviation was a cardinal 
crime. But . . . there is just one thing the matter with 


344 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Elizabeth Slater. When this thing is right, no matter 
what else is wrong, she is gay as a lark. When it is 
wrong, not the Angel Gabriel himself, nor a band of 
adoring archangels in heaven would be of any use. 
Neither Arch, nor you make any real difference to me 
any more. You see I am in my Sahara, looking back at 
you who are still shivering on the brink.” 

“What you say about writing is the common experi¬ 
ence of those in the trade. But if it makes you feel this 
way, not really believing it, just think how it makes me 
feel who actually have not turned out one paragraph in 
the last eighteen months. Your Sahara setting is all 
moonshine. You and I are born high comedy.” 

“Comedie humaine” Elizabeth said slowly. 

“No! Gay farce!” 

“That state of mind does exist, of course, but it is sub¬ 
conscious, most of the time, because it really is not the 
most typical or significant part of me.” 

“After this, you are going to write to me,” Satterlee 
fired widely. 

“Yes.” 

“Regularly.” 

With determination to get light on what he called one 
of Elizabeth’s fool moods, Satterlee tried another shot. 
“I wonder if you can understand,” he said, “the pestifer¬ 
ous frame of mind in which I left your home, last winter. 
Later, I administered a mental spanking to myself. I 
was crazed for drugs. All Chinamen carry them. Loong 
has some undiscoverable hiding place for his. They 
weren’t in the portmanteau I carred off. I appeared like 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


345 


a common house thief, robbing a family servant of his 
wages.” 

“And you weren’t!” 

“The portmanteau contained nothing but old books 
and pamphlets. I sent them back on the spot.” 

“They came, but-” 

“Do you realize that you are harboring a genius?” 
As he put this question, Satterlee’s eyes shifted from 
Elizabeth’s grave face to the gently moving ash tree and 
back again to Elizabeth’s accusing eyes. As he looked 
at her he was afraid he would tell her the truth. But 
he resolved he would never tell her the entire truth, only 
as far as he went, would be as it happened. For when 
Elizabeth looked at him he could not invent lies. 

“Loong Li writes books. He is translating parts of 
Confucius. He was a man of some distinction in his own 
country. Middaw knows about him. It’s a funny story, 

that! Loong killed his mother, once-” Satterlee 

again shifted his eyes to the ash tree. “Hang it! ” he said 
fretfully. “There is no purple haze hovering over the 
ash tree. Don’t you see, Elizabeth, that all you said 
about its splendor is balderdash?” 

Elizabeth slapped twice, ineffectually, at a mosquito. 
Satterlee was annoyed, for he felt certain it would come 
over to the fallen log, where he sat, and bite him. 

“Won’t you finish about Loong Li, please? What else 
was in the black portmanteau?” 

“Well, the Confucius was there, a part of it, at least, 
in Chinese characters, and a dozen or more cheap Ameri¬ 
can copy books. Hold on! I remember, they had 




346 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


printed on them in pale red, ‘Lucky Star, Composition, 
No. 165.’ Funny how things like that stick. It is such 
tricks that make us believe in the supernatural.” 

“What else was in the bag?” 

“It isn’t friendly to hold me down that way. Hang 
it! There comes that infernal mosquito. Look here, 
bird, you can’t have my life’s blood. Elizabeth has her 
eye on that.” 

“The copy books and the Confucius were not all. 
After they came back, Loong Li went down to London in 
a white rage. I tried to get you on the long distance 
phone, but you were ill, so I telegraphed a detective, 
the one who helped me to hunt down Anthony, and he 
took charge of Loong Li and brought him home. He 
said Loong was docile, but in great trouble. He found 
the Chinaman unfathomable. Now what did you take 
from the portmanteau and never return?” 

“Why can’t you guess? You know how precious a 
manuscript is to us poor devil writers.” 

“But that you sent back.” 

“Maybe a leaf or an entire chapter got lost in the 
shuffle.” 

“Was there nothing else?” 

Satterlee felt the time had come for a straight no. 
But the denial refused to drop from his lips. “There was 
a small box,” he said as if thinking with an effort into the 
past. “It was a queer Chinese box made of iron and 
sealed. It was also padlocked. But strangely enough, 
a key hung from a brass ring welded into the cover. 
Here, I thought, was the drug. I opened it and found 
nothing. I am telling you the truth. I found nothing,” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


347 


again his eyes met Elizabeth’s, “but a little dust.” 

“How curious that it should be sealed and locked and 
apparently cause Loong Li such deep sorrow.” 

“Yes, isn’t it?” 

Elizabeth’s face went white with a gust of anger. 
“Why can’t you tell me a straight story?” she said. 
“There must have been something more to it. You said 
dust?” 

“Yes, dust. Dust, dust, dust, dust. It fell on my 
Bokhara rug. I had it swept up, of course, and put in the 
ash can.” 

Elizabeth turned abruptly away from Satterlee and 
started up the path, leading to the two stone bridges. 
And Satterlee, who followed close upon her, kept saying, 
“It is the truth. Don’t you believe me? I have told 
you the truth. Let it alone. Never attempt to travel 
down a lost trail.” 

When Elizabeth reached the second bridge she stopped 
so suddenly Satterlee had to make a sidelong lunge not 
to fall over her. 

“I am angry,” Elizabeth said, her voice trembling up 
and out with throbbing gusts. “You have not lied to me; 
neither have you told me the truth. Loong Li hates you. 
He would murder you if you were not my friend. But 
as he cannot kill you, he is planning to kill himself. 
When he came back from London, Lucy was dying, so he 
waited. But now- You can’t help him?” 

Satterlee remained dumb, but his eyes showed panic. 

“I am going to say good-bye to you here,” Elizabeth 
then said. “I can’t invite you to the White Wren while 
Loong Li is there. It is inhospitable, but Loong Li is 



348 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


in trouble.” Elizabeth, who could not keep her voice 
from trembling as she said these words, put out a relent¬ 
ing hand, but Satterlee’s next sentence sent it with speed 
to her side. 

“You put the need of a servant before that of a 
friend!” 

They both hesitated for a minute. 

The tragic sight of Satterlee tore at Elizabeth’s mem¬ 
ory and again she said as she had said earlier in the 
day, “I am sorry for you.” 

“And I am sorry for you, but I am one of God’s dere¬ 
licts and I am powerless to help you.” 

Elizabeth watched Satterlee with a foreshadowing of 
tragedy. His face, twisted out of shape and small as if 
driven by some tortuous thought, put fright into her soul. 
He struggled to speak again, breathed something thickly 
about a lost trail and jumped as if he were shot, when the 
low, trembling whistle of the night mail sounded its warn¬ 
ing down in Aber Glasslyn Pass. 

Elizabeth hastened toward the friendly light shining 
in the White Wren, where Anthony, who had been racing 
with the down express, joined her. 

“The house is ripping,” he said. “I shall be almost 
glad to have Arch see it. He might be pleased. After 
eating, let Prudence and me romp you down to Harlech. 
The moon will be up and I can’t wait to have you see the 
new planting of yews and the walls of the house, a won¬ 
derful grey with purple in them.” 

But Elizabeth looked dubious. 

“Oh! I forgot the resuscitated Satterlee. He has to 
be fed verily and likewise.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


349 


“Archibald Satterlee has gone,” Elizabeth spoke in a 
still, queer voice that made Anthony cock one eye at 
her and remain silent. 

Half way through his very comfortable tea, Anthony 
put down his cup and with considerable manner counted 
out three bobs which he found in his upper left-hand 
pocket. These he put in his upper right. “Small debts, 
I believe in paying promptly,” he said as he met Eliza¬ 
beth’s dark eyes, still bright with excitement. 


CHAPTER V 


After luncheon the next day, Elizabeth called Loong 
Li into the empty room where she did her writing. 

“Mr. Satterlee was here yesterday,” she said. “I 
asked him about your portmanteau which he carried off 
to London, hoping the bag contained opium. Possibly 
you noticed how ill he seemed Christmas week, and 
understood. But he found nothing, except a few books 
and a sealed box. This box, Loong, he also opened. 
Possibly you-” 

A shrill cry from Loong Li ended Elizabeth’s sentence. 
He stood by the door looking down at her as she sat 
upright in a straight wooden chair, her tortured eyes 
meeting his in painful uncertainty. His bleak face with 
its canceled expression deepened her fear. For an 
instant the room in which she sat receded and then the 
chair beneath seemed to rise from the floor and give her 
support. She rested heavily upon it, while she clung to 
the edge of the table with her hands. Struggling away 
from Loong Li’s eyes, she looked down the valley where 
only the day before the delicate May life had filled her 
with joy. A dense fog from the North Sea cut off from 
her sight even the silken leaves of a birch tree that grew 
against the house. It might be any day of the year and 
anywhere in the world—or out of it. 

Over by the door, Loong Li stood sobbing. 

She envied him. 

“Loong!” 

“I kill him!” 


350 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


351 


“No, no, no! Nothing could hurt Aunt Fan more. 
She was not vindictive and she never retaliated. I mean 
she never injured any one because he injured her. Rather, 
she turned her cheek. Do you understand, Loong Li? 
That was her religion—to bear all—to turn her cheek—” 

“Madame Duncan, a god, maybe!” 

Did he speak in derision or in worship? Elizabeth 
wondered. A vision of the Pinnacle and of the lonely 
pine tree, where she and Arch had placed Aunt Fan’s 
ashes rushed through her mind, and aroused in her pas¬ 
sionate resentment. She shuddered over Satterlee’s story 
of the spilled ashes on his Bokhara rug and their final 
disposal. She was incensed that he dared meddle with 
Loong Li’s property. She was furious at Loong Li for 
having touched them. She was incensed at a world where 
such ugly, futile, cruel things could happen. There was 
nothing she could do about it, except, except- Eliza¬ 

beth bent her hands on the table in impotent rage— 
except—No. The loss was inevitable—like death—one 
accepted- 

The pain, breaking through the habitual calm of 
Loong’s face stirred her to say, “What you did was not a 
sin; it was only a misfortune which you and I must 
forget.” 

“I kill him!” 

“No!” 

Elizabeth was in despair. She knew that nothing she 
could command or urge would reach Loong Li. She 
looked at the odd piece of oriental mechanism opposite 
her and tried to devise some way to get a promise from 
him to leave Archibald Satterlee alone. She was at a 




352 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


loss. A feeling of fright crept over her and she gripped 
the wooden bench with trembling hands. She was in tur¬ 
bulent waters. How had she gotten there? Why couldn’t 
she extricate herself? In a little while, it would be too 
late. It might be too late, even now. 

Then Loong Li became once more mobile. Quite 
naturally and very gently, he approached Elizabeth. 
“I will wait,” he said in his ordinary sing-song. “Mister 
Slater come, maybe he help me. I go see dirty Welsh 
girl peel the potatoes. Maybe she not so dirty, Loong Li 
there.” 

Long after Loong Li left the room, Elizabeth sat at the 
desk thinking of Aunt Fan. She recalled how gloriously 
she used to repeat to her the “Ode to Duty,” a clarion 
cry to the elect of a past generation. Aunt Fan! But 
she could not cry. Arch might be here any time, and 
then- 

With shaking hands, Elizabeth put on her out-door 
garments and went out into the white world. 



CHAPTER VI 


The cold, thin mists were floating softly back to the 
North Sea whence they had come. Curious and sly as 
usual, Elizabeth thought, as she rushed swiftly along an 
abandoned logging road toward Bryn Moel. She was 
glad the afternoon was clearing, for without being fool¬ 
hardy, she could fight her way to the top of the mountain 
and so perhaps crush back this new horror in her soul. 
Of all the peaks near Snowdon, Bryn Moel was the hard¬ 
est to climb, the most isolated. Elizabeth loved it best. 
Up its ragged sides she knew her way almost in the dark. 

Breaking away from the old road, she followed a path 
that for half a mile ran humpily along a rock-bound, 
deeply gouged stream. Slippery roots from clumps of 
silver birches and yews, the earth beaten away from them 
by adventurous pedestrians, made the path a dangerous 
trap for the dull-footed. At the end of this lap, the trail 
crossed the stream just above a fifty-foot drop that made 
in summer a thin trickle of water the village people called 
“Fairy Falls/’ an innocent trap that enticed to disap¬ 
pointment many a weary tourist. The smooth boulder 
by which she was accustomed to cross was now boiling 
in seething waters like a turnip in a pot. Two feet 
above, a rock rose high into the air. Here the stream 
was deep but narrow. Having measured her distance she 
leaped upon the rock, slipped, regained her hold and 
was again on her rapid flight up Bryn Moel. A sharp 
353 


354 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


turn brought her to a clump of hemlock trees, still stand¬ 
ing in a pocket of silvery mist. 

Elizabeth now bent her energies to climbing and pull¬ 
ing herself up high rocks, slipping around jagged corners, 
avoiding slippery stones and moss-encrusted leaf bog. It 
was a fierce struggle against the stern dictum of nature, 
“Thou shalt not!” Her blood beat swiftly through her 
body and her ears rang a shrill note in varying keys. 
Then her heart stopped its quick throbs, as she paused for 
a space by a fern-crowned stump where, draggled and 
dirty, still hung a piece of white cotton lace, a rag torn 
from a woman’s skirt. It marked a spot where the sum¬ 
mer before an English girl had slipped and broken her 
leg. At that time, Elizabeth had resolved never to climb 
Bryn Moel without a companion. But the mountain was 
so much lower than Snowdon or even Moel Hebog, being 
well within the line of deciduous trees, she had decided 
the resolution foolish and gone over the trail again and 
again. And this afternoon, again, it seemed a foolhardy 
thing to do. Not a soul in the world knew where she 
was or cared—or cared. For one instant she contem¬ 
plated turning back. But there was Arch coming for 
Lize. If she were lost, what difference would it make? 
Besides, she was very near the mysterious top, where she 
had ventured more than once without tackle or guide. 

And so Elizabeth climbed on. 

By crawling around to the precipice side of a rock 
that rose from the summit of the mountain into the air 
like a chimney, she could gain a narrow footing along 
which she worked her way. It was a short struggle and 
there was but one point of danger. She flung her coat 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


355 


up ahead of her and made the point with cool certitude. 
The top, concave like a shallow bowl, was lined with bril¬ 
liant green moss and grey fungi. In the center rose a 
dwarf spruce tree, three feet tall and three feet in diame¬ 
ter, wind-blown, stunted, dense with closely growing 
branches, ancient, weary. 

Elizabeth stood looking down on the world below, 
where the white mists were insidiously settling over the 
hills and blotting out the valleys. The wind had again 
risen, but it was blowing seaward. As long as it blew 
north and west she believed she had nothing to fear. She 
looked up to the sky, its blue whitened to a dreary pal¬ 
lor. She looked until she felt that she and the green 
bowl and the wizened tree were floating through space. 
On and on, they seemed to go, rising and dipping dizzily 
through boundless areas of mist. 

Then she closed her eyes and thought. 

“Aunt Fan!” Elizabeth shouted aloud, “Aunt Fan! 
Aunt Fan! It is done, Aunt Fan, and there is nothing 
I can do, nothing, nothing. I must go on just the same 
as if it hadn’t happened. That is what you would have 
me do; but how can I? That is what you would 
approve.” She dropped face downward on the green 
bowl and wept, tearing the moss beneath her hands and 
flinging it wide. She felt she could not bear it. The 
strange accident was of no abiding consequence as it 
could not hurt her real Aunt Fan, and yet. It was 
Aunt Fan’s exquisite self. But it wasn’t Aunt Fan’s 
self. No, no, no, no. She fixed her streaming eyes on 
the moss so close to her face and counted its threadlike 
fruit stems till she had reached four figures and then she 


356 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


began to see them but dimly, and then she couldn’t see 
them at all. 

She turned slightly over. A thick white fog had 
settled close down upon her, wrapping its ice-cold blan¬ 
kets about her. She drew her coat close and rolled 
underneath the dense branches of the spruce tree. The 
mists were still drifting north and west. They would 
pass. And yet there was very little wind. Had they 
merely drifted over from Snowdon? Would they shift 
again, or was she caught in a trap? 

Elizabeth pulled the prickly fragrant branches close 
about her and stared out at a dead white wall. Then she 
closed her eyes, for it was fatiguing, like looking too 
long and too hard at a sheet of white paper. For an hour 
or more she lay very still; she felt that she had been 
foolish, that she would never again be so foolish. She 
was angry with herself. All her life she had done silly 
things and life, never once showing mercy for her weak¬ 
ness, had punished. Life was unjust in her blows. If she 
got out of this hole, there was Arch waiting for her. 
Maybe he was at the White Wren now. // she got out; 
but the chances were not even- 

Elizabeth resolutely closed her eyes against a new 
bogy, fright, and tried to think things into a clearer light. 
Arch troubled her. She had been selfish. She was in a 
position where selfishness was forced upon her. She saw 
no possible reparation she could make unless she died 
tonight on the mountain. That would, of course, clear 
things up tremendously for Arch. He could then, with¬ 
out embarrassment, make for himself and his clan, includ¬ 
ing his blue-eyed sons, the conventional surroundings he 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


357 


so much coveted. Then the institutions of the Slater 
tribe, more important than the Constitution of the 
United States, could be rightly maintained. But she 
would not die. In a little while she would make an effort 
to save herself. The mist now seemed fixed. After all 
she might not be able to reach the village. Her mind 
worked in disconnected struggles. She might soon be 
too numb to move. She recalled the tragic story of a 
guide who had crawled half way down Moel Hebog on 
just such a day as this. She remembered Lucy Penrose. 
From somewhere, dizzily below her, a jackdaw emitted a 
raucous hawk. 

Elizabeth rolled out from beneath the spruce branches 
and jumped to her feet, whirling around in circles. 
“Caught!” she cried, “Caught!” 

There were only two ways to get down from the green 
bowl: to climb down the crevice she had come up or to 
drop down onto the path from the opposite side. The 
crevice was impossible, the drop onto the path was the 
better chance. She tried to think out the distance. The 
place where she would land was less than twice her height 
below the bowl. Even if she reached the path, could she 
go on? Useless to speculate beyond the drop. The 
immediate problem was hazard enough. Intently she 
listened to the strange whirrings of the tree tops beneath 
her. Either the wind had shifted or she had lost the 
north. When she flung herself on the moss she had been 
lying east and west. She had, however, sagged forward 
slightly to get her coat, and then still a little further 
forward to crawl well beneath the protecting branches of 
the spruce tree. The densest growth of the tree was on 


358 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


the southeastern side. If she were now on the south¬ 
eastern side of the bowl, why then the wind hadn’t 
shifted and she was directly above the path. 

Elizabeth huddled herself into a shivering ball and 
fought panic. She could take her chance but once. For 
one wild minute she had a desire to cast herself into 
space and so end this new, smothering feeling, terrifying 
as the supreme rending of child-birth. Close upon this 
desire came the primordial demand to live. In spite of 
crowding memories of agony and disappointment, she 
wished to live. A part of her fright was physical, she 
reasoned, and to be discounted. Lifting her arms high 
into the grey mists, she took long breaths to equalize her 
circulation. Having thought out the points of the com¬ 
pass as they should be and having chosen the side of 
the bowl from which she would make her experimental 
drop into life or eternity, she crawled to the rim and 
strained her eyes downward. Useless. She remembered 
seeing a rusty tin can someone had left in the bowl. If 
she could find that. She felt along the wet moss and put 
her hand on the tin. This accident seemed to her a 
miracle. She bent her head down and dropped it over 
the edge. If the can hit the path, she would know by 
the noise it made. But there came no cheerful clank. 
After waiting a few seconds she heard far below her 
a faint tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink, tink-a-tink—a-tink— 
a-tink. Then mysterious silence again encompassed her. 

She had thrown the can down the precipice, the only 
spot where the woods did not climb half way up the 
mountain. This told her where she was, she thought 
grimly. Precisely opposite from where she crouched 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


359 


was the path. If it weren’t for the ragged spruce tree, 
she could cross the bowl accurately enough to be safe, for 
the path broadened out into a smooth landing, beaten 
flat by the feet of many climbers who were contented to 
stop at the base of the chimney and get only a cramped 
view of the Snowdon range from between a clump of 
low-growing hemlocks. 

Scorning her own fright, Elizabeth crossed to the oppo¬ 
site side, let herself over the edge of the bowl, clung for 
an instant to the rock, then with a slight push outward, 
let herself loose. She landed on her feet, her knees bent, 
her head lightly hitting the rock down which she had 
slipped. In agony of nervous excitement she cried aloud. 
Putting out her hands blindly into the mist, she found she 
was kneeling on a smooth boulder, nearer to the preci¬ 
pice than she had intended, but safe. For a blank of 
time, her position seemed to her utterly hopeless, then her 
mood changed, obedient to her stubborn will. 

From where she sat, down to the sharp bend by the 
hemlocks there were no cross trails. In one way, her path 
would be easy enough to keep, for on either side of it was 
a deep leaf mould, spongy, uncertain, dangerous to the 
careless climber, but a positive trail-guide in the dark. 
Down by the hemlocks, the path widened and diverged 
into numberless intersecting trails, but there would be the 
sound of rushing water to help her. When she came to 
the falls, but that was another problem. 

To Elizabeth’s mind, the descent resolved itself into a 
question of patience. Otherwise, she believed herself well 
equipped. Dropping on her knees she felt delicately with 
her hands for the leaf mould and then the path, found a 


360 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


smooth rock at the bottom of which she remembered 
ending the main ascent, and patted it tenderly as if it 
were a child. It was a rather friendly boulder against 
which most climbers leaned to regain their breath and 
to rest their overstrained toes. She let herself down 
cautiously over this, and hitching along like Godkin when 
he first learned the joy of locomotion, began her perilous 
descent. 

After Elizabeth had lifted and twisted and slid her 
body down what seemed to her an interminable distance, 
she found herself clawing a rotten stump from a sharp 
projection of which hung the rag of cotton lace she had 
found in her ascent. She had gone not more than a rod 
and it had taken her, she reckoned, an hour—fifteen 
minutes—she could not tell. It was useless to count time 
or to fret. For a space, steadying herself by a sapling, she 
stood erect, then less cramped and again crouching, she 
continued her descent. 

It seemed to her a long time after this that she 
heard in the distance the rushing of the mountain brook 
and the splashing of Fairy Falls. She grew to hate the 
white fog that encompassed her. She would be more 
comfortable if her eyes were bandaged. Even through 
closed lids, she saw its silvery whiteness. Her only 
recourse was to go doggedly on, she told herself and 
smiled cynically in the telling for she had never yet 
known a dog with senses as obtuse as hers. When she 
reached the network of trails where the hemlocks stood 
on swampy ground, she found one was main-traveled. 
This she took and she soon hit a stretch of corduroy that 
lifted her out of the bog. She knew she was beneath the 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


361 


clump of lofty evergreens, but she could not hear even 
the faintest sing-song in their branches. “Fool! Fool!” 
she kept saying to herself as she bit back her rage. 
“Fool!” When the corduroy ended, she plunged into 
mud and uncertainty. With both hands stretched out in 
front of her and her feet feeling the ground they trod 
upon, she moved inch by inch toward the sound of run¬ 
ning water. Twice she fell into the mire and once she 
hit against a flowering shadbush she had passed on her 
way up, and again she knew she had found an assuring 
landmark. A few minutes later she rested her hand on 
a smooth boulder which had been her landing place when 
she leaped from the rock in the center of the stream. 
This had been her goal from the time she had left the 
summit of Bryn Moel. Only a few feet ahead of her was 
the rock on the verge of the falls, but as completely hid¬ 
den from her as if it were not there. 

There was nothing more that she could venture. Her 
blood throbbed peltingly through her ears and her body 
shook. She was cold and hot at once. Her coat, heavy 
with moisture, no longer gave her comfort, and her over¬ 
shoes were torn to rags. She felt herself a lost atom, and 
if she were lost it would appear to her world that she had 
taken her own life to escape Arch—perhaps. 

Closing her eyes against the white horror about her, 
she tried to discover a line of escape. But the roaring 
waters dazed her mind. What would Aunt Fan have 
done in her place, she wondered. It was no use to ask so 
foolish a question, for Aunt Fan would never have been 
there. She would never have run away to Wales. But 
she would never have married Arch and there would 


362 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


have been no one to run away from. Her mind was 
working, now, in meaningless circles. This was also 
unlike Aunt Fan. She had run, that was stupid. She 
had neither the courageous spirit of the older generation 
nor the bold audacity of the modern woman. She saw 
herself a composite—a mongrel—a twixt and tweenie. 

Elizabeth rested her head against the boulder close to 
the rushing water which had a thousand voices, wrangling 
and fretting one another like an angry mob. Her body felt 
heavy and hard; it might be slowly solidifying. Why 
had she never known before how wonderful is the sound 
of running water? The current of the stream and the life 
currents in her body—were they the same? Somewhere 
in a tree high above her head, a bird began to sing. Birds 
always did sing about this time of year, she thought 
hazily. Odd! This was the first one she had heard since 
the daw had frightened her. She hadn’t heard any other 
bird since she had come to live on Bryn Moel. Again he 
sang and his notes sounded like a chord of music. If 
she had been in the Cornish hills she would have recog¬ 
nized the singer. Did veeries chant in Wales? Nowhere 
but at home had she ever heard his deep, liquid tones. 
She had been dreaming. That was what no human could 
safely do on Bryn Moel—if he wanted to live. Eliza¬ 
beth forced her body up in a half-standing position 
against the rock, and pushing her sealed eyelids open 
with her hands, looked up toward the treetops. Her 
heart thumped and then stood still. For the mist was 
again shifting. Out of the silver, illimitable shadows 
loomed disquietingly. Lifting her hand in front of her 
face, she counted her four fingers and her thumb that 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


363 


bent too impulsively outward. She pushed it at arm’s 
length and wriggled her fingers. She could see them 
wriggle. Then she ventured to turn her eyes toward the 
rock, mid stream. It looked darkly from the thinning 
mists. Beyond she saw an immaterial substance that 
appeared and vanished and again reappeared. She peered 
blindly ahead, for there, beyond the rushing waters was 
where she had always wanted to be. And as she looked, 
her mind and her body seemed to return to her, and with 
them the power to go on. 

Resolved not to miss this miraculous chance of escape, 
Elizabeth took the two jumps and with all the nervous 
speed of which she was capable, ran down the path, for 
she knew the fog might again close in about her at any 
minute. She ran jerkily, scarcely touching the tree roots 
in her way, leaping high, wrenching her body back from 
falling, slipping rashly down sharp grades and tearing her 
way up others. Like a Tschaikowsky symphony, she 
described her progress. There must be some good saint, 
she thought, whose special care is fools. 

At last she saw an old barn leaning unhappily on the 
ground, close to the old logging road, and she fell down 
in a heap, her head on the ground, close to a thorn bush. 
They made two round balls at the turn of the road. 
Again the white fog folded about Elizabeth and the earth 
returned to a deathlike stillness until the mists should 
rise. 

And yet, the stillness was not complete. By little pan¬ 
icky cries and flutters, Elizabeth knew that she was dis¬ 
turbing a mother bird and her fledglings. Fumbling in 
the thorn, she touched an empty nest. She would tell 


364 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


Lize to come and look at it. And that was all she would 
ever tell of her day’s adventure, for there was no one who 
would be interested. A pang of hopeless loneliness stole 
over her. Sheer fatigue kept her from hurrying on to¬ 
ward the White Wren, where she imagined Lize and 
Anthony, and old Loong Li and maybe Arch might be 
impatient for her return. But she had to rest a little 
longer. Not so very far away, she heard her name called 
in a droning sing-song, followed by the sharp barkings 
of a dog. Before she could think it out, something soft 
and cool traveled over her face and neck, two paws 
lightly touched her shoulders and a hairy fan swirled 
madly about her, hitting everywhere at once. 

Elizabeth rose achingly to her feet and pushed away 
from her Lize’s collie which she herself had rescued so 
long ago in the Great Western and which Lize, with 
proverbial Slater originality, had named Gelert. 

“Down!” she said commandingly. “Down!” For 
Gelert, after the manner of his breed, was leaping madly 
against her and covering her face with slobbering kisses. 
“Down!” she again said coldly. Gelert was Lize’s dog. 
There must be no mistake on this point: she had no more 
pets. And yet for Sanny’s sake, she relented an instant 
and let her hand wander about Gelert’s silky ears. Be¬ 
side himself with excitement, he flung himself away and 
tore about in torrents of joy, circling around and around, 
doubling on his tracks and each time narrowing his cir¬ 
cumference till again he came up to her with a wild 
plunge. 

“You are a darling,” she whispered in his ears, for she 
knew in some mysterious way, he had sensed her danger. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


365 


Down the road through the mist, Elizabeth had been 
watching a light which seemed to be coming nearer. 
Now she saw it was a man with a lantern. It might be 
Arch, she thought and she waited cold with fear. But a 
wheedling voice came out of the grey, calling, “Geliy! 
Geliy!” and she knew Loong Li was searching for her. 
She called aloud and they met on the rough grass road. 
With Gelert now nosing Elizabeth’s footsteps they made 
their way slowly back to the White Wren. 

Elizabeth explained briefly that she had been delayed 
by the fog and Loong Li told her that a telephone mes¬ 
sage had come from Mr. Slater. He would be in Beth- 
gelert on the evening train. 

As they crossed the first stone bridge they heard the 
long, low whistle of the locomotive, and when they walked 
up the path to the White Wren, Arch was waiting in the 
dark to be let in. 

“How do you do, Arch?” Elizabeth said quietly. 

“How are you, Elizabeth?” 

And so they walked into the house together. 

Elizabeth paused in the dim hall. 

• As on the cruel night when Lucy died, she again leaned 
against the cold, damp wall, for she found difficulty in 
breathing. Now, as on that other night, Loong Li stood 
by the door, his swaying lantern sending out a circle of 
light in a polka-dot pattern. But this time he stood wait¬ 
ing for orders not from her but from Arch. Where 
Anthony had once stood, now stood Arch. It was the 
same mosaic, done in more vivid tones. She was con¬ 
scious that Arch was waiting for something, but she 
couldn’t focus her mind on his needs. She made an un- 


366 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


successful effort to speak, once, twice. And then she 
heard herself say, “I must go to my room and wash.” 

Elizabeth blushed with vexation that she should seem 
so rude, but the need to go to her room was paramount. 
She could not think beyond it. Determinedly she crossed 
the hall and stood by the newel-post. “In my folly,” she 
said, “I took too long a walk. Loong, will you build a 
fire in the Prince of Wales’ room and see that Mr. Slater 
is comfortable.” 

As Elizabeth mounted the stairway she felt her blood 
beginning to move less sluggishly, and so before she 
disappeared in the dark, she leaned over the banisters 
and spoke again. This time her voice did not show a ten¬ 
dency to tremble. “You want to see Lize. I will send 
her to your room in the jerk of a lamb’s tail.” Eliza¬ 
beth’s voice trailed lingeringly over these odd words, 
picked up so long ago on the Connecticut hills. “Anthony 
will be home any time now. And—oh, we dine at 
seven.” 

Once inside her room with the door closed, she paused 
to think. The feminine necessity was upon her to cry, 
cry, cry. But she could not cry until the day was quite 
over. There were things to do; achievements, she called 
them cynically, her mind reverting hazily back to her 
struggle on Bryn Moel. Having crossed to the black 
cupboards, built into a corner of her room, she shed her 
sodden shoes, her muddy stockings, her torn and ragged 
garments. And putting on a purple and silver wrapper, 
one that Lize believed was made for a princess, she went 
into her little daughter’s room and told her the great 
news. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


367 


And then she walked back again to her own room, her 
swimming head held high, her aching feet lightly touch¬ 
ing the floor, her lips still parted with a smile. Why so 
everlastingly observant of the respectabilities, she asked 
herself scornfully as she closed the paneled door of her 
sleeping room. The hounding satanical imps of despair 
resentfully popped back into their own dark abodes and 
she sank down in her friendly chair, now drawn up in 
front of a blazing log fire. By her side was a small table 
on which Loong Li had placed a pot of bubbling tea. 
“Blessed, blessed Loong Li,” she said half aloud, while 
she cautiously sipped cup after cup of the boiling amber 
liquid. When she thought of Loong Li, she acknowledged 
to herself that true service was beautiful—such as Loong 
Li proffered, simple, unobtrusive, faithful, dignified. In 
his exquisite effacement, his abnegation, and even to a 
greater degree in his perfect humility, she recognized the 
flawless characteristics which men demanded of the 
female species—which Arch had demanded of her—would 
still demand of her and which she was incapable of 
rendering. 

When Elizabeth was ready for the seven o’clock dinner, 
she paused to look at her London frock in a beautiful 
Adams mirror that was once the property of Gwendolyn 
Tawney. It was black velvet with floating chiffon 
sleeves and two pointed tails that mysteriously, some¬ 
where behind her, tapped the floor. She liked to be suf¬ 
ficiently accustomed to a frock to forget it when it was 
once securely moored. So she sat down in low chairs and 
high chairs, crossed her aching feet and lifted her lame 
arms and let the chiffon float through the air. Experi- 


368 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


mentally, she arched her head and watched the two little 
black tails flap along the floor. The builder of the velvet 
gown lacked a sense of fitness. When she had remon¬ 
strated at their sudden growth, he had said they were 
provocative and she had thought of Sanny in his puppy 
days. 

Elizabeth drifted slowly back to the mirror. Arch and 
Anthony, being Slaters, would scarcely notice her hands, 
which were patched with adhesive plaster and shiny with 
collodion. Her hair was well in place and her girdle 
snapped. She snatched a buffer and once more polished 
her broken nails. There was nothing more to do but 
to go downstairs. Her hands and arms already carried as 
much powder as she deemed consistent with wearing 
black, and both men despised rouge on women of their 
own family. The village clock, so nearby that it seemed 
to be in her room, clanged a melancholy seven. Eliza¬ 
beth hurried downstairs. 

The two brothers stood waiting for her. Anthony’s 
bright blue eyes darted from the refectory table laid 
for three, to his shining patent leathers and back again to 
the table; but they carefully did not turn toward Eliza¬ 
beth or Arch. Yet, Elizabeth felt a sort of brooding 
kindness in his detachment. Arch stood at the end of the 
room, his tall, angular figure slightly relaxed, his expres¬ 
sion guarded. 

They waited for her to speak first. Elizabeth smiled 
at the unrelaxed Slater attitude. “Where is Lize?” she 
asked, including both men in her question. 

Arch now joined his brother by the hearth and, 
turning to Elizabeth, said, “Lize has gone back to bed. 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


369 


She is warm enough now, but before morning she will 
need another blanket.” 

Loong Li now appeared, carrying high a polished 
pewter tureen of bubbling soup. This he placed at the 
end of the table. The three of them took their seats at 
the refectory table and Elizabeth dished the soup as if 
performing some mystic rite. Loong put a platter of 
chicken in front of Arch and, when the time came, 
assigned to Elizabeth the cutting of a marvelous straw¬ 
berry cake, all in due order, in accordance with the 
revered custom of Blowmedown. There was an aloofness, 
a magnificence about Elizabeth, that held Anthony’s 
attention. Arch remained preoccupied until his brother 
dug up a few banalities cherished for just such oddish 
situations as the present one. Arch, who appeared to be 
mildly amused, replied in kind. And Elizabeth, lest her 
long silence be as enigmatic to the two Slaters as their 
conversation, of which they seemed to be arrogantly 
proud, was to her, told them of her afternoon adven¬ 
ture, omitting what might alarm, but telling enough 
to explain her obvious lassitude. Not being a success¬ 
ful liar, or even an amateur prevaricator, she blundered 
her beginnings. Her voice sounded infinitely tired and 
her hands shook as she cut the shortcake. Both 
men were watching her too closely, she felt. “Do you 
know,” she said, turning to Anthony, “I started to climb 
Bryn Moel.” 

“I’ll be damned!” Anthony snorted, his company man¬ 
ners gone. “I was the only brainless idiot who ventured 
on the Port Madoc road today. Kept my horn going like 
a siren and when I lunged into Harlech Castle, well, I just 


370 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


waited for the curtain to rise. I waited all day, but it 
never got its scenery changed, so I turned about and came 
home.” 

“The fog lifted here about noon and I went out for a 
walk. I was well up on high ground when it settled down 
enough—to keep stationary for an—an interminable 
time. When it lifted, I came home. When it began to 
lift,” she said with a flash of joy, “a bird sang; it sang in 
chords like a veerie.” 

“My word! I don’t see why you didn’t freeze to 
death.” 

“Not my hour,” she said gaily as she rose from the 
table. “But I am tired and so, good-night.” 

She moved swiftly to the door, the two black tails of 
her velvet gown bobbing provocatively along the floor as 
the couturier had said they would bob. 

Before Arch could reach the door, Elizabeth was gone. 
“She is too swift. I can never quite reach her,” he grum¬ 
bled as he returned to his seat. 

Anthony frowned excitedly into his cup of black coffee. 
He was evolving a Slaterism of unusual acumen. He had 
convinced himself that all women were merely a bunch of 
vapors and whims, viperish or wholesome, but negligible 
—with the two exceptions, his mother and Elizabeth. 
“Like quicksilver,” he said aloud, too late to make his 
meaning obvious. “Confound it! Elizabeth is quick¬ 
silver,” Anthony shouted, “shooting up and down our 
little measuring rods, according to the intensity of the 
sun’s rays. She is best off under blazing heat with a 
chance to shoot upward.” 

“That’s where you are wrong.” 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


371 


“Don’t hang tenaciously to facts when you are judging 
Elizabeth. She is not steady-on-the-job like Mother. 
Always changing her point of view. Last night she flung 
down a sentence she had found in a book, ‘Freedom is a 
good thing, but we lose through it golden moments.’ I 
took her up on her own ground and she floored me in 
five seconds.” 

“Elizabeth will always argue.” 

Anthony winced under his brother’s hardness of 
speech. A biting memory of Elizabeth as she left the 
room moved hi into say, “Didn’t you see how ghastly 
she was? White face, burning eyes, like a fever. First, I 
thought it was her black gown. You know heroines in 
books look that way in black velvet, though most I have 
seen are on red, fat women; velvet gowns, I mean. And 
they don’t look interesting. I mean the women, hang 
it!” 

“Just so!” 

Anthony was conscious of a suppressed desire to kick 
his brother. “Elizabeth was agonizingly tired,” he said. 
“That was what her looks meant. She was dead with 
fatigue. Her hands were done up in surgeon’s plaster; 
they weren’t last night. I bet a hundred dollars she’s 
been up Bryn Moel. Hell!” Anthony kicked the 
hearthrug under his feet into a ball. “Hell fire!” he 
repeated. “There isn’t another soul in North Wales 
who could go up to the Green Bowl and come back again, 
alive or dead on a day like today. Alive or dead, 
I say, for there are forty places where a body might fall 
and never be found. Maybe you don’t know this par¬ 
ticular map of chaos. It’s one of those spots God forgot 


372 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


to finish—turned the job over to Lucifer, maybe, before 
He had found him out.” 

“Is there a maid around we can send up to her? She 
ought to have someone with her.” 

Anthony looked embarrassedly away from his brother. 
“I will ring if you say so,” he offered as he crossed the 
room to a bell-rope that hung from the ceiling. “Confound 
it! I am eternally detaching this thing from its moor¬ 
ings,” he said as the thing coiled down around his arm 
like a snake. “I am as nervous as a binnacle,” he mur¬ 
mured. “We are in an awful mess.” 

After giving an order to a pretty Welsh maid whom he 
called the voiceless Muscovite, in other words, he ex¬ 
plained to Lize, a rare bird, he returned to the hearth, 
where Arch was standing stern and aggressive. 

“Do you love Elizabeth?” Arch asked abruptly. 

“Yes, damn it!” Anthony shouted. “If you mean do I 
love Elizabeth as a man loves his sweetheart, damn it, no! 
I love her as I used to love Mother, only more, because 
she is more understanding. She is my anchor, my sun by 
which I live and work; she is Mother Mary sent— 
phew! You’ll think that’s rot.” 

Here Anthony reined in his prancing Pegasus, clearly 
knowing from many trials that Arch could have no com¬ 
prehension of his rhapsodical flights, indulged in to cover 
a hurt that his brother had inflicted. But pitying his 
tongue-tied plight he continued, “You can depend upon 
my loyalty, old boy.” He despised himself and Arch that 
there could be a necessity to say these words. “I shall 
never fall in love with your wife for the simple reason 
she is your wife. You have lost your bearings. She res- 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


373 


cued me two times from the darnedest hole a cub ever 
dug for himself and then she gave me the building of 
Harlech House.” 

Arch apologized, and Anthony, putting his arm on his 
brother’s bony shoulder, forgave him for the simple and 
often regretted reason that with him resentment had the 
solidity of air. Moreover, in his sight, despite thick 
moments and soul densities, Arch was a hero and very 
much of a man. He needed to have the obvious put into 
one-syllable words, maybe. He would help him. An¬ 
thony’s mind reached out in many directions. Most of 
his brother’s lions were beyond his shot. “Ha!” he said 
reflectively, “Ha! Won’t you smoke?” 

“No, thanks.” 

Awkwardly and in a Slaterish offhand manner, aimed 
at the casual, but hitting the dramatic, he made a few 
statements about Archibald Satterlee which might be of 
use to the blindfolded. Seeing restlessness or indifference 
in the mind of his brother, he stopped in the middle of a 
sentence, feeling himself to be a fool. 

Anthony glanced down at the refectory table, now a 
tangle of coffee cups, cigarette boxes and stained doilies. 
Arch always messed up things that way. All the other 
Slaters were more tidy. In an argument or any heated 
moment of conversation, Arch had a habit of pushing the 
table settings away from him, making little pools of 
cream and coffee on the polished wood, interspersed with 
islands of ash and sugar. Tonight, even the bunch of 
hawthorn had been shot over on the floor, while its bowl 
ran a narrow stream of water to the edge of the table, 
where it slyly made of its plaything, a tiny waterfall. 


374 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“Supposing I get these things cleared away,” Anthony 
now proposed. “I want to show you the plans of Harlech 
House. I have been spoiling to show them to you for 
months. You will call me a conceited ass,” he admitted 
with a grin. “Anyhow, I know they are beautiful. It’s 
the sort of place you’d hug yourself to live in, purple and 
grey, built on yellow sand dunes close to the sea—a stone 
house with a bluish roof—plenty of green about the 
place and a yew garden. We are putting up a thousand 
cypresses as a windbreak.” 

And so, in accordance with Slater morals, Arch and 
Anthony put aside their violent feelings as a phase of 
life to be disregarded when any intellectual problem 
arose, and bent their clear, critical minds to the mastery 
and correction of a mass of blueprints. 


CHAPTER VI 


Elizabeth woke to a dazzling blue day. 

Moel Hebog stood forth purple-black against a brilliant 
sky, its irregularities and indecisions clearly revealed. 
With the sun, Elizabeth’s courage returned. She came 
downstairs to find that Anthony had already raced his 
brother to Harlech to show him the foundations and the 
three feet of wall that now rose above the golden dunes. 

“You can’t dream how beautiful they will be,” Anthony 
said, “the bluey green of the sea, the cypress trees and 
the blue roofs of Harlech House, all melting into one and 
now each standing forth clearly defined—floating off into 
space and again rising like a shadow out of the sea-fog, 
mysterious, threatening-” 

“Balderdash!” Arch interrupted, impatiently, for to 
him, Harlech House was merely a mass of stone, and 
inadequately small tools. Twice over, Anthony had said 
why he used primitive tools. With them he thought he 
got better results than with electric shortcuts. 

Anthony snorted in unmannerly fashion over his coffee, 
apologized to Elizabeth, and with an inclusive nod to 
the breakfast table, was again on the road, steering 
Prudence Dodge down the Port Madoc road, at forty per. 

Lize immediately carried her father off to see the odd 
grey cottage where she had lessons in Latin and arithme¬ 
tic. Elizabeth watched her little daughter as she walked 
primly down the path with Arch and turned across the 
first bridge. She was glad to see Lize had outgrown her 
375 


376 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


timidity. In her excitement, she had forgotten her 
luncheon, packed in a small basket, and waiting for her 
on a low table by the front door. Elizabeth called Gelert, 
put the handle of the basket in his mouth and sent him 
after his mistress. This she knew would please Lize. 
Very likely, Lize had intentionally left her luncheon. 
She never knew really what was in her daughter’s mind. 

As Elizabeth turned back to the dining-room she 
glanced at the banjo clock in the office. Precisely fifteen 
minutes before they had sat down to breakfast, three of 
them, at least, with misgivings. Now it was comfortably 
over. But how the Slaters bolted their food! There 
were times when even food-bolting was desirable—at a 
station with a scant five minutes to stamp out one’s 
hunger—at a subway restaurant, and on such a morning 
as this. 

Elizabeth opened wide the windows to let out the 
coffee-bacon air that stifled, and summoned Loong Li. 
If there were to be a crown-roast for dinner—and there 
would have to be, she thought—she would be obliged to 
dispatch Loong Li to Port Madoc. Loong could bring 
back other foods, chiefly those condiments the Slater clan 
believed to be necessities and which she had never known 
to exist until after her marriage. They were the queer 
sauces that Madame Slater said all best families always 
kept in their store-rooms. She had been ruffled by this 
information, casually dropped, with a nice regard for her 
own feelings, lest it humiliate. Was it possible that she, 
too, would be willing to be reckoned a best family? She 
didn’t know. The path of the righteous housewife was 
not yet closed to her. There still remained a chance to 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


377 


choose—to choose. The stodginess of life and the glory 
were inextricable. And yet- 

With a sigh, Elizabeth turned to Loong Li and began 
to discuss the possibilities of the Port Madoc markets. 

It seemed strange to Elizabeth to find herself, an hour 
later, once more struggling to keep up with Arch as they 
strode swiftly down the river road. They crossed the 
bridge to the rocks and the fallen log, where two days 
before she had gone with Archibald Satterlee. 

Arch was the first to speak. 

“You are very much changed,” he said. 

Elizabeth stiffened, for she felt that the man who sat 
so straight on the boulder not far away had crossed the 
sea to judge her, and if not found too utterly wanting, to 
carry her back to Boston, where he would establish her 
mistress of the royal clan of Slater. He had at least the 
right to take an inventory. “Few things are static,” she 
said indifferently. 

“You have been in trouble.” 

“Who escapes?” 

For one instant he laid his hands on Elizabeth’s, a rare 
look of tenderness shining in his gleaming eyes; the next 
he sat aloof, austere, impenetrable. She let her eyes rest 
curiously on his classic features, primitive in their sim¬ 
plicity. There w r ere no complications in its lines as there 
were in Anthony’s. The mouth and chin were strong, the 
brow intellectual. The calm complacency of the earlier 
days had been replaced by sterner lines. She felt less 
afraid of him than she had once felt. But his presence, 
now as in the old days, shook for her the foundations of 
life. Because of him nothing had been as she had 



378 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


dreamed it—or ever could be. And Arch? She knew 
herself to be responsible for the new curbed look now 
upon him. He had the manner of one waiting. She had 
not yet spoken to him of the three boys. They had not 
been mentioned the night before. She couldn’t. The 
world encompassing her was gentle and tender, the young 
leaves above her head, the bloom resting over the hill¬ 
tops, the clouds above. She alone was cruel. 

“I tried to write to you, when you lost your mother, 
but couldn’t,” she said. “It was useless. The world does 
not seem quite—safe without her or—certain. I loved 
her,” she added, striving not to let her voice sound as 
melancholy as she felt. 

“She trusted you.” 

“That was good of her.” 

“No!” 

Their eyes met for a flash. 

“Why not good of her?” Elizabeth asked, the words 
forced out of her by Arch’s expression. 

“You trust where you can. It isn’t good of you to 
trust.” 

“You find it difficult.” 

Again, Elizabeth’s eyes wandered down the valley to 
a regiment of wind-driven pines which seemed to be 
fleeing swiftly from hill-top to hill-top. 

“I always trust your integrity of character, but your 

kindness of heart-” Arch stopped bitterly. “You 

haven’t asked once about your sons, since I’ve been 
here.” 

“Why should I? They are so absurdly safe with you, 
with all washings and lessons nicely attended to by Anne. 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


379 


Solemn blue-eyed babies!’’ Elizabeth continued. “I 
could never understand their mild acquiescences, their 
placidities, their enormous calm. I felt I had brought 
into the world three miniature Wolfgang von Goethes. 
Once, I pinched them all around, to make them cry, so I 
could have the pleasure of comforting them, but they 
blinked their tears away stoically, and fixed their round 
blue eyes upon me, waiting for the next stab.” 

“Do you expect me to believe that?” 

“I wish you could believe it,” Elizabeth surprised him 
by saying. 

Arch set his jaw. He had crossed the Atlantic, not to 
swear at Elizabeth, but humbly to beg her pardon. 

Elizabeth sympathized with his temper. “Now that I 
am middle-aged and my nerves less smooth, my primor- 
dials kick like a shot revolver. It’s easy to understand 
why a man murders his wife, more easy to understand 
than why he doesn’t. I don’t see how I escaped. And 
Lize, Lize,” she chivied swiftly ahead, “has gotten 
beyond my control. She needs the discipline of her 
brothers.” 

“And they need her. You thought they were obedient 
to me? They are not. Actually, they never were. I 
don’t reach the spot where they are. Last summer I took 
them into camp; they reverted. Not gradually, but at 
the first casting. They are a savage tribe. They have 
their own war-whoops, their own language, their own 
methods of torture. Not long since, they robbed a Cath¬ 
olic graveyard—wrenched bronze crucifixes off the head¬ 
stones. I punished them and—well! They let me-” 

“That’s Duncan deviltry, unstrained-” 




380 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


“The funny part of it is,” Arch said resentfully, “they 
keep winning good-conduct badges at school, while at 
home they are devils. I am forced to punish them with 
increasing frequency.” 

“Do they cry?” 

“No.” 

“They wouldn’t, of course.” 

Elizabeth struggled to imagine the three boys turned 
into three young devils, but such a conception was 
beyond her knowledge of her mild-eyed boys and so 
beyond her belief. All children, she supposed, were 
outside the intelligence of most grown people. There was 
Lize; yes, there was Lize- 

“Elizabeth,” Arch spoke her name with thick lips, 
“why did you run away? You had your freedom. I 
have an ugly temper and when I am angered—but you— 
you should have understood. Anyhow, there were the 
children.” 

Elizabeth, who had resolved to meet Arch honestly, 
said, “Partly, I think, I ran away from you and partly 
from my three enigmatical Goethes, and partly I ran 
from destiny. I failed to escape.” 

“What do you mean by that?” 

Elizabeth, who was accustomed to Anthony’s swifter 
perceptions, sighed and plodded on. 

“I wanted to be free—but you already know the ‘all 
for liberty and the world well lost’ blague. I had begun 
to write when Anthony’s music-hall adventure upset my 
plans.” 

“You have been good to Anthony.” 

“He is wonderful, only he needs someone around to 



FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


381 


hold him up, out of the smudge. We speak the same 
language and that you know is a happiness. After 
Anthony’s escapade came Lucy’s cruel accident and long 
illness. And then came Archibald Satterlee. I tried to 
help him and couldn’t. Finally Loong Li came over to be 
with me. Unintentionally, he brought trouble with 
him.” 

With a cry of pain, she told Arch the story of Aunt 
Fan and the empty box. 

“And so you see,” she continued after she had recov¬ 
ered her calm, “life has held me pinned. I am not singled 
out in my obstructions. Mine is the common lot. You 
said I had changed. I have in some ways. I no longer 
care what people think about my writing. I feel more 
deeply than I used to and I see things I ought to put into 
books—cruel things about life, but true things. I shall 
never leave writing alone. I can’t until I am ironed 
entirely flat. But if it is best for the little boys and Lize 
and the clan, and if you still want me to, why I will go 
back to Boston and keep the big house open as your 
mother willed.” 

“Foremost, I want what is best for the children. We 
brought them into the world.” 

“And we can’t return them to the blank whence we 
evoked them.” 

“I wouldn’t if it were possible.” 

“No, one wouldn’t,” Elizabeth conceded. “And yet, 
they need what we can’t give them. Why don’t you 
divorce me? Wait a while and you can get one for deser¬ 
tion. You ought to marry a sensible New England girl 
of the Lucy Penrose type, who would instinctively know 


382 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


how to train the boys and how to make your life peace¬ 
able and happy, forever after.” 

“Elizabeth! ” 

Arch stretched his arms toward his wife, then let them 
drop awkwardly by his side. “Darn it!” he finally 
jerked, “I don’t want to divorce you.” 

“It would be awkward,” Elizabeth admitted. 

“Deuced awkward!” 

“But convenient!” 

“Deuced inconvenient!” 

There the conversation ended. 

Down the valley, the long morning shadows, cast by 
tree and bush, were swiftly shortening. The sun was 
turning to gold the softly swaying grasses and opening 
wide the buds of the hawthorn hedge that ran blithely 
alongside a tumbling stone wall. The air was intensely 
fragrant with the perfume of wild hyacinths and the hot 
tang of honey-bees. 

“Arch,” Elizabeth said after a long silence, “what do 
you want?” 

“I want you to come back with me to Boston.” 

“You aren’t afraid to risk it.” 

“I dare!” 

“It is a bleak outlook.” 

“You think so?” 

“You don’t understand. Your father and mother were 
in accord—very much in accord,” Elizabeth repeated the 
last words with emphasis. 

“For that they paid heavily. You don’t think it was 
worth the price?” 

Elizabeth nervously clinched her hands, bound with 


FETTERS OF FREEDOM 


383 


surgeon’s plaster and smeared with collodion. “Your 
father and mother both deposited in the home bank. 
They knew no foreign exchange. Our generation is not 
theirs. Calmness and deliberation and abnegation and 
stateliness are not in us. That magnificent Georgian 
mansion in the Fenway is the result of your mother’s own 
peculiar nobility. What have I, a nervous writer-woman, 
to do with such a place? A house to me is merely a place 
of shelter, a spring-board to life, not life. Oh Arch,” Eliz¬ 
abeth cried, “I am sorry for you, sorry for the little boys, 
sorry for Lize. You think the children ought to satisfy 
me. I love them, but I want something besides. Aunt 
Fan was such a wonderful companion. After she was 
gone I was thrown back on myself. Sometimes it seems 
to me I shall perish from loneliness.” 

“It is from that despair that a home saves one.” 

“Companionship, not brick walls, saves one.” 

Elizabeth again looked down the narrow green valley, 
her eyes too blurred by tears to see the hawthorn and the 
bees. She had gone as far as she knew to make for Arch 
the things that were intangible tangible. 

Arch blundered to his feet and walked over to the log 
where Elizabeth was seated. “I believe you still love 
me,” he said with surprise. 

“Oh—yes.” 

She rose from the tree trunk in an agony of fright. 

Putting his hands heavily upon her shoulders, Arch 
looked fiercely into her eyes. The necessity to speak was 
heavy upon him. “And I love you,” he said at last. But 
the words came forth in a shout, not as he wanted them 
to come, and they seemed to drown the world. 














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